THE  LIBRARY 

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LOS  ANGELES 


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'p 


THE 


(DUrm  fttnte  in  Hero  j)0rh. 


X 


A   MEMBER   OF  THE   NEW   YORK  GENEALOGICAL   AND   BIOGRAPHICAL   SOCIETY. 


KIP'S   BAY   HOUSE   IN   1691. 


I.     NEW  YORK  SOCIETY  IN  OLDEN  TIME. 
II.     TRACES  OF  AMERICAN  LINEAGE  IN  ENGLAND. 


NEW  YORK  : 
G.    P.    PUTNAM    &    SONS, 

M  DCCC  LXXII. 


Lowell  City  Library. 


F 
ni 


TO 


EDWARD  FLOYD  DE  LANCEY,  ESQ., 

OF  NEW  YORK. 

NEARLY  thirty  years  ago  the  author  dedicated  to  your  venerated  father  the 
first  book  he  published.  There  is  a  propriety,  therefore,  in  inscribing  to  the  son 
the  last  he  may  ever  write. 

It  harmonizes,  too,  with  the  spirit  of  this  work  to  place  on  this  page  the  name 
of  one  who  now  represents  in  this  country  the  loyal  and  chivalrous  De  Lancey  of 
"  the  olden  time." 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY 


OLDEN  TIME. 


PREFACE. 


PROBABLY  no  article  has  appeared  for  years  in  a  New  York 
literary  journal  which  excited  the  attention  of  the  community 
to  the  extent  of  the  first  of  those  reprinted  in  this  volume — 
"  New  York  Society  in  the  Olden  Time."  It  was  published  in 
Putnam's  Magazine  for  September,  1870.  While  the  papers 
generally  criticised  it,  and  contended  that  the  present  times 
were  best,  those,  on  the  contrary,  whose  associations  stretched 
back  into  the  past,  hailed  it  as  a  faithful  portraiture  of  life  as 
it  was  in  the  Colony  and  in  the  generation  which  succeeded 
our  separation  from  the  Mother  Country.  A  member  of  one 
of  our  oldest  Colonial  families  writes  to  the  author  :  "I  did 
not  know  there  existed  in  this  modern  time  any  one  having 
the  knowledge  as  well  as  courage  to  write  so  clear  and  un- 
biassed a  review  of  the  past." 

The  author  has  yielded,  therefore,  to  the  request  of  friends 
to  enlarge  the  article  and  give  it  a  more  permanent  form.  It 
is  a  picture  of  a  state  of  things  gone  never  to  return,  and  per- 
haps for  that  reason  is  worthy  of  preservation.  A  few  years 
longer  and  no  one  will  be  left  who  could  give  these  reminis- 
cences. 

The  second  article  in  this  volume  is  different  in  its  style  and 
object,  being  published  in  a  journal  of  a  widely  different  char- 
acter. It  appeared  in  the  July,  1871,  number  of  the  "  New 
York  Genealogical  and  Biographical  Record."  This  also  has 
been  considerably  enlarged  by  notices  of  other  families. 

Perhaps,  together,  these  two  articles  may  save  from  perish- 
ing, some  recollections  of  the  Old  Regime. 

While  for  the  young,  who  are  looking  only  to  the  shadowy 
future,  these  pages  may  possess  but  little  interest,  perhaps 


8  PREFACE. 

there  are  those  with  whom  the  light  is  fading,  who  will  find 
here  familiar  scenes  and  names  which  will  call  up  again  "  the 
buried  past,"  until  the  tones  sound  to  them  (as  one  writes 
the  author)  "like  the  voice  of  their  own  dear  kindred." 

NEW  YORK,  Jan.,  1872. 


NEW   YORK   SOCIETY 


OLDEN    TIME. 


To  lament  the  days  that  are  gone,  and  believe  the 
past  better  than  the  present,  is  a  tendency  which  has 
been  remarked  as  far  back  as  the  days  of  Solomon. 
"  Say  not  thou,"  says  the  wise  king,  "  What  is  the 
cause  that  the  former  days  were  better  than  these  ?  for 
thou  dost  not  inquire  wisely  concerning  this."  However 
this  may  be,  it  is  a  propensity  which  has  always  exist- 
ed, to  compare  unfavorably  the  present  with  the  distant 
past.  The  Golden  Age  of  which  poets  sang  was  in 
"  our  fathers'  day,  and  in  the  old  time  before  them." 

From  this  feeling  the  writer  realizes  that  he  is  not 
free,  and,  in  many  respects,  might  be  inclined  to  impute 
his  estimate  of  the  present  to  the  waning  light  in  which 
he  sees  it.  When  dealing,  however,  with  facts  with 
which  he  is  well  acquainted,  he  feels  that  he  cannot  be 
prejudiced ;  and  in  this  way  it  is  that  he  contrasts  the 
society  of  the  present  with  that  which  once  existed ,  in 
New  York.  From  his  distant  home  he  looks  back  on 
the  rush  and  hurry  of  life  as  it  now  exists  in  his  native 
city ;  and,  while  he  realizes  its  increased  glitter  and 

2 


10  NEW    YORK    SOCIETY 

splendor,   he    feels   that   it  has   depreciated  from    the 
dignity  and  high  tone  which  once  characterized  it. 

Of  the  society  of  the  olden  time  he  can,  of  course, 
know  but  little  by  actual  experience.  His  knowledge 
of  it  began  when  the  old  regime  was  just  passing  away. 
In  the  days  of  his  childhood,  the  men  of  the  Revolution 
were  fast  going  down  to  the  grave.  Of  these  he  knew 
some  in  their  old  age.  His  father's  contemporaries, 
however,  were  somewhat  younger,  though  brought  up 
under  the  same  influences.  But  when  that  generation 
departed,  the  spirit  which  had  aided  in  forming  their 
characters  had  gone  also,  never  again  to  be  felt.  To 
many  of  these  men  he  looked  up  as  if  they  were  superior 
beings ;  and,  indeed,  he  has  felt,  in  all  his  passage 
through  life,  that  he  has  never  seen  the  equals  of  those 
who  then  stood  forward  prominently  in  public  affairs. 

The  earliest  notice  we  have  of  colonial  society  is  in 
Mrs.  Grant's  delightful  "  American  Lady."  She  was 
the  daughter  of  a  British  officer  who  came  over  with 
troops  during  the  old  French  war,  and  her  reminis- 
cences begin  about  1760.  Her  residence  was  princi- 
pally in  Albany,  with  the  Schuyler  family.  Still,  she 
was  brought  in  contact  with  the  leading  families  of  the 
colony,  and  as  she  was  in  the  habit  of  often  visiting 
New  York,  she  learned  much  of  the  state  of  things  in 
that  city.  She  writes  thus  of  the  old  Dutch  and  colo- 
nial families  of  that  day:  "They  bore  about  them  the 
tokens  of  former  affluence  and  respectability,  such  as 
family  plate,  portraits  of  their  ancestors  executed  in  a 
superior  style,  and  great  numbers  of  original  paintings, 
some  of  which  were  much  admired  by  acknowledged 
judges."  In  New  York,  of  course,  the  highest  degree 
of  refinement  was  to  be  seen,  and  she  says:  "An  ex- 
pensive and  elegant  style  of  living  began  already  to 
take  place  in  New  York,  which  was,  from  the  resi- 


IN    THE    OLDEN    TIME.  I  I 

dence  of  the  Governor  and  Commander-in-Chief,  be- 
come the  seat  of  a  little  court." 

Society,  in  that  day,  was  very  stationary.  About 
1635  the  first  Dutch  settlers  came  out,  and  the  country 
was  much  of  it  occupied  by  their  large  grants,  many  of 
which  had  attached  to  them  manorial  rights.  They 
brought  with  them  some  of  the  social  distinctions  of  the 
old  country.  In  the  cities  of  Holland,  for  a  long  time, 
there  had  been  " great"  and  "small"  burgher  rights. 
In  Amsterdam  the  "great  burghers"  monopolized  all 
the  offices,  and  were  also  exempt  from  attainder  and 
confiscation  of  goods.  The  "small  burghers"  had  the 
freedom  of  trade  only.  In  1657  this  "great  burgher" 
right  was  introduced  into  New  Amsterdam  by  Gover- 
nor Stuyvesant. 

In  Paulding's  "Affairs  and  Men  of  New  Amsterdam 
in  the  Time  of  Governor  Peter  Stuyvesant,"  we  find  a 
list  of  the  recorded  GREAT  CITIZENSHIP,  in  the  year 
1657.  As  a  matter  of  the  olden  time,  it  is  here  given 
entire : 

Joh.  La  Montagnie  Jun.  Hendrick  Kip  Jun. 

Jan  Gillesen  Van  Burggh.  Capt.  Martin  Crigier. 

Hendrick  Kip.  Carel  Van  Burggh. 

De  Heer  General  Stuyvesant.  Jacob  Van  Couwenhoven. 

Domanie  Megapolensis.  Laurisen  Cornelisen  Van  Wei. 

Jacob  Garritsen  Strycker.  Johannes  Pietersen  Van  Burggh. 

Van  Virge.  Cornelis  Steenwyck. 

Wife  of  Cornelis  Van  Teinhoven.  Will.  Bogardus. 

Hendrick  Van  Dyck.  Daniel  Litschoe. 

Isaac  Kip.  Pieter  Van  Couwenhoven. 

"  These  twenty  names,"  says  William  L.  Stone, 
writing  in  1866,  "composed  the  aristocracy  of  New 
York  two  hundred  and  nine  years  ago.  .  .  .  We 
have  also  before  us  the  names  of  the  '  Small  Citizen- 
ship,' which  numbered  two  hundred  and  sixteen.  In 
a  few  short  years  it  was  found  that  the  division  of  the 


12  NEW    YORK    SOCIETY 

citizens  into  two  classes  produced  great  inconvenience, 
in  consequence  of  the  very  small  number  of  great 
burghers  who  were  eligible  to  office.  It  now  became 
necessary  for  the  Government  to  change  this  unpopu- 
lar order.  In  the  year  1668  the  difference  between 
'great'  and  'small'  burghers  was  abolished,  when 
every  burgher  became  legally  entitled  to  all  burgher 
privileges."  * 

About  fifty  years  after  the  arrival  of  the  early  Dutch 
settlers,  they  were  followed  by  the  Huguenots,  driven 
abroad  principally  by  the  revocation  of  the  Edict  of 
Nantes,  and  including,  in  their  number,  members  of 
some  of  the  best  families  in  France.  Thus  came  the 
Jays,  De  Lanceys,  Rapaljes,  De  Peysters,  Pintards, 
&c.  In  1664  the  English  took  possession  of  the  col- 
ony, and,  from  that  time,  English  settlers  increased. 
The  colony  became  (as  Paulding  says)  "  a  place  in 
which  to  provide  for  younger  sons."  Still,  this  often 
brought  out  scions  of  distinguished  families  and  the 
best  blood  in  England. 

Thus  matters  stood  until  the  Revolution.  The 
country  was  parcelled  out  among  great  proprietors. 
We  can  trace  them  from  the  city  of  "  New  Amster- 
dam "  to  the  northern  part  of  the  State.  In  what  is 
now  the  thickly-populated  city  were  the  lands  of  the 
Stuyvesants,  originally  the  Bowerie  of  the  old  Gover- 
nor. Next  above  was  the  grant  to  the  Kip  family, 
called  "  Kip's  Bay,"  made  in  1638.  In  the  centre  of 
the  island  were  the  possessions  of  the  De  Lanceys. 
Opposite,  on  Long  Island,  was  the  grant  to  the  Law- 
rence family.  We  cross  over  Harlaem  River  and  reach 
"  Morrissanea,"  given  to  the  Morris  family.  Beyond 
this,  on  the  East  River,  was  "  De  Lancey's  Farm," 
another  grant  to  that  powerful  family ;  while  on  the 

*  Stone's  "  History  of  New  York  City,"  p.  33. 


IN    THE    OLDEN    TIME.  13 

Hudson,  to  the  west,  was  the  lower  Van  Courtlandt 
manor,  and  the  Phillipse  manor.  Above,  at  Peekskill, 
was  the  upper  manor  of  the  Van  Courtlandts.  Then 
came  the  manor  of  Livingston,  then  the  Beekmans, 
then  the  manor  of  Kipsburgh,  purchased  by  the  Kip 
family  from  the  Indians,  in  1686,  and  made  a  royal 
grant  by  Governor  Dongan,  two  years  afterwards. 
Still  higher  up  was  the  Van  Rensselaer  manor,  twenty- 
four  miles  by  forty-eight;  and,  above  that,  the  pos- 
sessions of  the  Schuylers.  Further  west,  on  the  Mo- 
hawk, were  the  broad  lands  of  Sir  William  Johnson, 
created  a  baronet  for  his  services  in  the  old  French 
and  Indian  wars,  who  lived  in  a  rude  magnificence  at 
Johnson  Hall.  All  this  was  sacrificed  by  his  son,  Sir 
John,  for  the  sake  of  loyalty,  when  he  took  up  arms 
for  the  king  and  was  driven  into  Canada.  The  title, 
however,  is  still  held  by  his  grandson,  and  stands  re- 
corded in  the  baronetage  of  England. 

The  very  names  of  places,  in  some  cases,  show  their 
history.  Such,  for  instance,  is  that  of  Yonkers.  The 
word  Junker  (pronounced  Younker),  in  the  languages 
of  Northern  Europe,  means  the  nobly-born — the  gen- 
tleman. In  West  Chester,  on  the  Hudson  River,  still 
stands  the  old  manor-house  of  the  Phillipse  family. 
The  writer  remembers,  in  his  early  day,  when  visiting 
there,  the  large  rooms  and  richly-ornamented  ceilings, 
with  quaint  old  formal  gardens  about  the  house. 
When,  before  the  Revolution,  Mr.  Phillipse  lived 
there,  "  lord  of  all  he  surveyed,"  he  was  always  spoken 
of  by  his  tenantry  as  "  the  Yonker  "  —the  gentleman 
—par  excellence.  In  fact,  he  was  the  only  person  of 
that  social  rank  in  that  part  of  the  country.  In  this 
way  the  town,  which  subsequently  grew  up  about  the 
old  manor-house,  took  the  name  of  Yonkers. 

This  was  a  state  of  things  which  existed  in  no  other. 


14  NEW    YORK    SOCIETY 

part  of  the  continent.  In  New  England  there  were 
scarcely  any  large  landed  proprietors.  The  country 
was  divided  up  among  small  farmers,  and,  when  the 
Revolution  commenced,  the  people  almost  unanimously 
espoused  its  cause.  The  aristocratic  element,  which 
in  New  York  rallied  around  the  Crown,  was  here  en- 
tirely wanting.  The  only  exception  to  this,  which  we 
can  remember,  was  the  case  of  the  Gardiners,  of 
Maine.  Their  wide  lands  were  confiscated  for  their 
loyalty ;  but,  on  account  of  some  informality,  after  the 
Revolution  they  managed  to  recover  their  property, 
and  are  still  seated  at  Gardiner. 

At  the  South,  where  so  much  was  said  about  their 
being  "the  descendants  of  the  Cavaliers,"  there  were 
no  such  feudal  relations.  The  planters  had  no  ten- 
antry ;  they  had  slaves.  Their  system,  therefore,  was 
similar  to  that  of  the  serfdom  of  Russia.  With  the 
colonial  families  of  New  York  it  was  the  English  feu- 
dal system. 

Hereditary  landed  property  was,  in  that  day,  invest- 
ed with  the  same  dignity  in  New  York  which  it  has 
now  in  Europe;  and,  for  more  than  a  century,  these 
families  retained  their  possessions,  and  directed  the 
infant  colony.  They  formed  a  coterie  of  their  own, 
and,  generation  after  generation,  married  among  them- 
selves. Turn  to  the  early  records  of  New  York,  and 
you  find  all  places  of  official  dignity  filled  by  a  certain 
set  of  familiar  names,  many  of  which,  since  the  Revo- 
lution, have  entirely  disappeared.  As  we  have  re- 
marked, they  occupied  a  position  similar  to  that  of  the 
English  country  gentleman,  with  his  many  tenants,  and 
were  everywhere  looked  up  to  with  the  same  kind  of 
respect  which  is  now  accorded  to  them.  Their  position 
was  an  acknowledged  one,  for  social  distinctions  then 
were  marked  and  undisputed.  They  were  the  persons 


IN    THE    OLDEN    TIME.  15 

who  were  placed  in  office  in  the  Provincial  Council 
and  Legislature,  and  no  one  pretended  to  think  it 
strange.  "They,"  says  a  writer  on  that  day,  "were 
the  gentry  of  the  country,  to  whom  the  country,  with- 
out a  rebellious  thought,  took  off  its  hat." 

Holmes,  in  his  poem  of  "  Agnes,"  thus  describes  the 
effect  produced  upon  country  people  by  the  sight  of  a 
gentleman's  equipage  :— 

"  And  all  the  midland  counties  through, 

The  ploughman  stopped  to  gaze, 
Where'er  his  chariot  swept  in  view 

Behind  the  shining  bays, 
With  mute  obeisance,  grave  and  slow, 

Repaid  by  bow  polite — 
For  such  the  way  with  high  and  low 

Till  after  Concord's  fight.''' 

In  that  age  the  very  dress  plainly  marked  the  dis- 
tinctions in  society.  No  one  who  saw  a  gentleman 
could  mistake  his  social  position.  Those  people  of  a 
century  ago  now  look  down  upon  us  from  their  por- 
traits, in  costumes  which,  in  our  day,  we  see  nowhere 
but  on  the  stage.  Velvet  coats  with  gold  lace,  large 
sleeves  and  ruffles  at  the  hands,  wigs  and  embroidered 
vests,  with  the  accompanying  rapier,  are  significant  of 
a  class  removed  from  the  rush  and  bustle  of  life — the 
"  nati  consumere  fruges  "-  —whose  occupation  was  not 
—to  toil.  No  one,  in  that  day,  below  their  degree, 
assumed  their  dress ;  nor  was  the  lady  surpassed  in 
costliness  of  attire  by  her  servant.  In  fact,  at  that 
time,  there  were  gentlemen  and  ladies,  and  there  were 
servants. 

The  manner  in  which  these  great  landed  estates 
were  arranged  fostered  a  feudal  feeling.  They  were 
granted  by  Government  to  the  proprietors,  on  condi- 
tion that,  in  a  certain  number  of  years,  they  settled  so 


1 6  NEW    YORK    SOCIETY 

many  tenants  upon  them.  These  settlers  were  gener- 
ally Germans  of  the  lower  class,  who  had  been  brought 
over  free.  Not  being  able  to  pay  their  passage-money, 
the  captain  took  them  without  charge,  and  then  they 
were  sold  by  him  to  the  landed  proprietors  for  a  cer- 
tain number  of  years,  in  accordance  with  the  size  of  the 
family.  The  sum  received  remunerated  him  for  the 
passage-money.  They  were  called,  in  that  day,  Re- 
demptioners •  and,  by  the  time  their  term  of  service- 
sometimes  extending  to  seven  years — had  expired, 
they  were  acquainted  with  the  ways  of  the  country  and 
its  manner  of  farming,  had  acquired  some  knowledge 
of  the  language,  and  were  prepared  to  set  up  for  them- 
selves. Thus  both  parties  were  benefited.  The  landed 
proprietor  fulfilled  his  contract  with  the  Government, 
and  the  Redemptioners  were  trained  for  becoming  in- 
dependent settlers. 

From  these  Redemptioners  many  of  the  wealthy 
farming  families,  now  living  in  the  Hudson  River  coun- 
ties, are  descended.  In  an  early  day  they  purchased 
lands  which  enriched  their  children.  The  writer's  fa- 
ther once  told  him  of  an  incident  which  occurred  in  his 
grandfather's  family.  One  of  his  German  tenants, 
having  served  out  his  time  of  several  years'  duration, 
brought  to  his  late  owner  a  bag  of  gold  which  had  come 
with  him  from  the  old  country,  and  was  sufficient  to 
purchase  a  farm.  "  But,"  said  his  master,  in  surprise, 
"  how  comes  it,  Hans,  with  all  this  money,  that  you  did 
not  pay  your  passage,  instead  of  serving  as  a  Redemp- 
tioner  so  long?"— "Oh,"  said  the  cautious  emigrant 
from  the  Rhine,  "  I  did  not  know  English,  and  I  should 
have  been  cheated.  Now  I  know  all  about  the  coun- 
try, and  I  can  set  up  for  myself." 

These  tenants,  however,  looked  up  with  unbounded 
reverence  to  the  landed  proprietor  who  owned  them, 


IX    THE    OLDEN    TIME.  lj 

and  it  took  much  more  than  one  generation  to  enable 
them  to  shake  off  this  feeling,  or  begin  to  think  of  a 
social  equality. 

There  was,  in  succeeding  times,  one  curious  result 
of  this  system  in  the  confusion  of  family  names.  These 
German  Redemptioners  often  had  but  one  name.  For 
instance,  a  man  named  Paulus  was  settled  as  a  tenant 
on  an  estate.  As  his  children  grew  up,  they  needed 
something  to  distinguish  them.  They  were  Paulus' 
Jan  and  Paulus'  Hendrick.  This  naturally  changed  to 
Jan  Paulus  and  Hendrick  Paulus,  and  thus  Paulus  be- 
came the  family  name. 

This  was  well  enough.  But  they  frequently  took 
the  name  of  their  proprietor.  He  was  known  as  Mor- 
ris' Paulus,  and  this,  in  the  next  generation,  naturally 
changed  to  Paulus  Morris,  and  his  children  assumed 
that  as  their  family  name.  In  this  way  there  are  many 
families  in  the  State  of  New  York  bearing  the  names 
of  the  old  landed  proprietors,  which  have  been  thus 
derived. 

Some  years  ago,  a  literary  gentleman,  who  was  com- 
piling facts  with  regard  to  the  early  history  of  the  State, 
came  to  the  writer,  very  much  puzzled.  "  Who,"  said 
he,  "  are  these  people  ?  I  find  their  names  in  Dutchess 
County,  and  yet,  looking  at  Holgate's  pedigree  of  that 
family,  I  see  they  cannot  belong  to  it.  Where  did  they 
come  from,  and  where  do  they  belong?"  The  above 
account  was  a  satisfactory  solution  of  the  mystery. 

But  to  return  to  this  system.  It  was  carried  out  to 
an  extent  of  which,  in  this  day,  most  persons  are  igno- 
rant. On  the  Van  Rensselaer  manor  there  were,  at 
one  time,  several  thousand  tenants,  and  their  gathering 
was  like  that  of  the  Scottish  clans.  When  a  member 
of  the  family  died,  they  came  down  to  Albany  to  do 
honor  at  the  funeral,  and  many  were  the  hogsheads  of 
3 


1 8  NEW    YORK    SOCIETY 

good  ale  which  were  broached  for  them.  They  looked 
up  to  the  "  Patroon  "  with  a  reverence  which  was  still 
lingering  in  the  writer's  early  day,  notwithstanding  the 
inroads  of  democracy.  And,  before  the  Revolution, 
this  feeling  was  shared  by  the  whole  country.  When 
it  was  announced  in  New  York,  a  century  ago,  that  the 
Patroon  was  coming  down  from  Albany  by  land,  the 
day  he  was  expected  to  reach  the  city  crowds  turned 
out  to  see  him  enter  in  his  coach-and-four. 

The  reference  to  the  funerals  at  the  Rensselaer 
manor-house  reminds  us  of  a  description  of  the  burial 
of  Philip  Livingston,  one  of  the  proprietors  of  Livings- 
ton manor,  in  February,  1749,  taken  from  a  paper  of 
that  day.  It  will  show  something  of  the  customs  of 
the  times.  The  services  were  performed  both  at  his 
town-house  in  New  York,  and  at  the  manor.  "  In  the 
city,  the  lower  rooms  of  most  of  the  houses  in  Broad- 
street,  where  he  resided,  were  thrown  open  to  receive 
visitors.  A  pipe  of  wine  was  spiced  for  the  occasion, 
and  to  each  of  the  eight  bearers,  with  a  pair  of  gloves, 
mourning  ring,  scarf  and  handkerchief,  a  monkey-spoon 
was  given."  (This  was  so  called  from  the  figure  of  an 
ape  or  monkey,  which  was  carved  in  solido  at  the  ex- 
tremity of  the  handle.  It  differed  from  a  common 
spoon  in  having  a  circular  and  very  shallow  bowl.) 
"  At  the  manor  these  ceremonies  were  all  repeated, 
another  pipe  of  wine  was  spiced,  and,  besides  the  same 
presents  to  the  bearers,  a  pair  of  black  gloves  and  a 
handkerchief  were  given  to  each  of  the  tenants.  The 
whole  expense  was  said  to  amount  to  ^500." 

These  manors  were  not  mere  names,  but  substantial 
evidences  of  an  authority  which,  in  the  present  day, 
exists  only  in  a  few  of  the  most  despotic  monarchial 
governments  of  Europe.  We  will  give  Holgate's  ac- 
count of  these  manorial  rights,  as  he  was  very  much 


IN    THE    OLDEN    TIME.  19 

disgusted  with  the  whole  system,  and  sums  up  his  ob- 
jections with  the  declaration — "Thepatroonship  of  New 
Netherlands  may  justly  be  regarded  as  nothing  less 
than  an  odious  form  of  feudal  aristocracy  transferred  to 
another  soil."  He  says  :  "  The  territory  was  made  a 
manor  with  feudal  appendages.  The  individual  thus 
undertaking  colonization  was  designated,  in  the  charter, 
as  a  PATROON,  and  endowed  with  baronial  honors.  He 
had,  for  example,  the  prerogatives  of  sovereignty  over 
the  dominion  which  he  thus  acquired  ;  administered  the 
laws  personally  or  by  functionaries  of  his  own  appoint- 
ment ;  appointed  his  own  civil  and  military,  as  well  as 
judicial  officers  ;  and  had  magazines,  fortifications,  and 
all  the  equipments  of  a  feudal  chieftain.  His  tenants 
owed  him  fealty  and  military  service,  as  vassals.  All 
adjudications  in  his  court  were  final,  with  the  exception 
of  civil  suits  amounting  to  fifty  guilders  and  upwards, 
when  an  appeal  lay  from  the  judgment  of  the  Patroon 
to  the  Director-General  and  Council.  And  it  is  pro- 
bable, that  a  similar  remedy  was  also  afforded  in  all 
criminal  offences  affecting  '  life  and  limb,'  this  being  one 
of  the  modifications  already  engrafted  upon  the  feudal 
sovereignties  of  Europe. 

"The  privileges  of  the  Patroon  in  his  manor  were 
similar  to  those  of  a  Baron  of  England.  Game  and 
fish  within  his  own  territorial  limits  were  under  his  own 
supervision.  Milling  privileges,  minerals,  and  pearl 
fisheries,  if  discovered,  were  his  personal  emoluments  ; 
which  last  provision  was  one  of  those  numerous  extrav- 
agancies that  for  a  long  period  allured  the  mercantile 
adventurers  of  Europe,  particularly  exemplified  in  the 
El  Dorado  of  Spanish  adventurers."  * 

Now,  all  this  was  a  state  of  things  and  a  manner  of 
social  life  totally  unknown  in  New  England.  We  have 

*  "  Holgate's  Genealogies,"  p.  28. 


2O  NEW    YORK    SOCIETY 

already  mentioned  that  most  of  its  inhabitants  were 
small  farmers,  wringing  their  subsistence  from  the  earth 
by  hard  labor.  Here  were  literally  no  servants,  but  a 
perfect  social  equality  existed  in  the  rural  districts. 
Their  "helps"  were  the  sons  and  daughters  of  neigh- 
boring farmers,  poorer  than  themselves,  who  for  a  time 
took  these  situations,  but  considered  themselves  as 
good  as  their  employers.  The  comparatively  wealthy 
men  were  in  their  cities. 

No  two  races  of  men  could  be  more  different  than 
the  New  Yorkers  of  that  day  and  the  people  of  New 
England.  There  was  a  perfect  contrast  in  all  their 
habits  of  social  life  and  ways  of  thinking.  The  Dutch 
disliked  the  Yankees,  as  they  called  them,  most  thor- 
oughly. This  feeling  is  shown,  in  a  ludicrous  way, 
through  the  whole  of  Irving's  "  Knickerbocker."  "  The 
Dutch  and  the  Yankees,"  he  says,  "  never  got  together 
without  fighting." 

There  is  a  curious  development  of  this  prejudice  in 
the  following  clause,  which  was  inserted  in  the  will  of 
a  member  of  a  distinguished  colonial  family  of  New 

York,  dated  1760.  "  It  is  my  desire  that  my  son, 

,  may  have  the  best  education  that  is  to  be  had 

in  England  or  America  ;  but  my  express  will  and  di- 
rections are,  that  he  never  be  sent,  for  that  purpose, 
to  the  Connecticut  colonies,  lest  he  should  imbibe,  in 
his  youth,  that  low  craft  and  cunning  so  incidental  to 
the  people  of  that  country,  which  is  so  interwoven  in 
their  constitutions  that  all  their  acts  cannot  disguise  it 
from  the  world,  though  many  of  them,  under  the  sanc- 
tified garb  of  religion,  have  endeavored  to  impose 
themselves  on  the  world  as  honest  men." 

Once  in  a  year,  generally,  the  gentry  of  New  York 
went  to  the  city  to  transact  their  business  and  make 
their  purchases.  There  they  mingled,  for  a  time,  in  its 


IN    THE    OLDEN    TIME.  21 

gayeties,  and  were  entertained  at  the  court  of  the  Go- 
vernor. These  dignitaries  were  generally  men  of  high 
families  in  England.  One  of  them,  for  instance — Lord 
Cornbury — was  a  blood  relative  of  the  royal  family. 
They  copied  the  customs  and  imitated  the  etiquette 
enforced  "  at  home,"  and  the  rejoicings  and  sorrowings, 
the  thanksgivings  and  fasts,  which  were  ordered  at 
Whitehall,  were  repeated  again  on  the  banks  of  the 
Hudson.  Some  years  ago  the  writer  was  looking  over 
the  records  of  the  old  Dutch  Church  in  New  York, 
when  he  found,  carefully  filed  away,  some  of  the  proc- 
lamations for  these  services.  One  of  them,  giving  no- 
tice of  a  thanksgiving-day,  in  the  reign  of  William  and 
Mary,  for  some  victory  in  the  Low  Countries,  puts  the 
celebration  off  a  fortnight,  to  give  time  for  the  news  to 
reach  Albany. 

During  the  rest  of  the  year  these  landlords  resided 
among  their  tenantry,  on  their  estates ;  and  about  many 
of  their  old  country-houses  were  associations  gathered, 
often  coming  down  from  the  first  settlement  of  the 
country,  giving  them  an  interest  which  can  never  invest 
the  new  residences  of  those  whom  later  times  elevated 
through  wealth.  Such  was  the  Van  Courtlandt  manor- 
house,  with  its  wainscoted  rooms  and  its  ghost-cham- 
ber ;  the  Rensselaer  manor-house,  where  of  old  had 
been  entertained  Talleyrand  and  the  exiled  princes 
from  Europe ;  the  Schuyler  house,  so  near  the  Sara- 
toga battle-field,  and  marked  by  memories  of  that  glo- 
rious event  in  the  life,  of  its  owner — (alas,  that  it  should 
have  passed  away  from  its  founder's  family !),  and  the 
residence  of  the  Livingstons,  on  the  banks  of  the  Hud- 
son, of  which  Louis  Philippe  expressed  such  grateful 
recollection  when,  after  his  elevation  to  the  throne,  he 
met,  in  Paris,  the  son  of  his  former  host. 

Probably  the  extent  to  which  hospitality  was  carried 


22  NEW    YORK    SOCIETY 

out  at  the  Livingston  manor-house  had  no  equal  in  this 
country.  At  the  beginning  of  this  century,  no  distin- 
guished foreigner  who  visited  this  country  but  could 
look  back,  like  Louis  Philippe,  to  a  visit  to  that  house. 
Thither  came  Lafayette  and  his  son.  Thither  came 
the  last  of  the  Penns,  whose  family  had  intermarried 
with  the  Livingstons.  Thither  came  Joseph  Buona- 
parte, the  ex-king  of  Spain,  who  remained  several  days 
with  a  suite  of  forty  persons.  At  the  moment  of  his 
departure,  when  all  the  equipages  were  drawn  up  at 
the  grand  entrance,  and  Mrs.  Livingston  was  making 
her  adieux  on  the  marble  piazza,  the  princess,  his  daugh- 
ter, called  for  her  drawing  materials.  It  was  supposed 
that  she  wished  to  sketch  the  view,  which  extends  for 
sixty  miles  around.  But  those  who  looked  over  her 
page  discovered  that,  it  was  the  chatelaine  she  was 
sketching. 

How  vivid  was  Joseph  Buonaparte's  recollection  of 
this  visit  may  be  drawn  from  the  fact  that  when,  years 
afterwards,  he  was  dying  in  Florence,  hearing  that  a 
lady  of  this  family  was  in  the  city,  he  sent  for  her  to 
his  bedside.  He  talked  to  her  about  her  mother,  and 
ended  with  the  remark:  "Your  mother  should  have 
been  a  queen  !  " 

There  was  one  more  of  these  old  places  of  which  we 
would  write,  to  preserve  some  memories  which  are  now 
fast  fading  away,  because  it  was  within  the  bounds  of 
our  city,  and  was  invested  with  so  many  historical  asso- 
ciations connected  with  the  Revolution.  It  is  the  house 
at  Kip's  Bay.  Though  many  years  have  passed  since 
it  was  swept  away  by  the  encroachments  of  the  city, 
yet  it  exists  among  the  recollections  of  the  writer's 
earliest  days,  when  it  was  still  occupied  by  the  family 
of  its  founder,  and  regarded  as  their  first  home  on  this 
continent.  It  was  erected  in  1655,  by  Jacobus  Kip, 


IN    THE    OLDEN    TIME.  23 

Secretary  of  the  Council,  who  received  a  grant  of  that 
part  of  the  island.  There  is,  in  the  possession  of  the 
family,  a  picture  of  it  as  it  appeared  in  the  time  of  the 
Revolution,  when  still  surrounded  by  venerable  oaks. 
It  was  a  large  double  house,  with  three  windows  on 
one  side  of  the  door,  and  two  on  the  other,  with  one 
large  wing.  On  the  right  hand  of  the  hall  was  the 
dining-room,  running  from  front  to  rear,  with  two  win- 
dows looking  out  over  the  bay,  and  two  over  the 
country  on  the  other  side.  This  was  the  room  which 
was  afterwards  invested  with  interest  from  its  connec- 
tion with  Major  Andre.  In  the  rear  of  the  house  was 
a  pear  tree,  planted  by  the  ladies  of  the  family  in  1 700, 
which  bore  fruit  until  its  destruction  in  1851.  In  this 
house  five  generations  of  the  family  were  born. 

Then  came  the  Revolution,  arid  Sargent,  in  his 
"  Life  of  Andre,"  thus  gives  its  history  in  those  stirring 
times:  "Where  now,  in  New  York,  is  the  unalluring 
and  crowded  neighborhood  of  the  Second  avenue  and 
Thirty-fifth  street,  stood,  in  1780,  the  ancient  Bowerie 
or  country-seat  of  Jacobus  Kip.  Built  in  1655,  of 
bricks  brought  from  Holland,  encompassed  by  pleas- 
ant trees,  and  in  easy  view  of  the  sparkling  waters  of 
Kip's  Bay,  on  the  East  River,  the  mansion  remained, 
even  to  our  own  times,  in  possession  of  one  of  its 
founder's  line.  Here  "  (continues  Sargent,  incorporat- 
ing the  humorous  recollections  of  Irving's  "  Knicker- 
bocker") "spread  the  same  smiling  meadows,  whose 
appearance  had  so  expanded  the  heart  of  Oloffe  the 
Dreamer,  in  the  fabulous  ages  of  the  colony ;  here  still 
nodded  the  groves  that  had  echoed  back  the  thunder 
of  Henry  Kip's  musketoon,  when  that  mighty  warrior 
left  his  name  to  the  surrounding  waves.  When  Wash- 
ington was  in  the  neighborhood,  Kip's  house  had  been 
his  quarters ;  when  Howe  crossed  from  Long  Island 


24  NEW    YORK    SOCIETY 

on  Sunday,  September  15,  1776,  he  debarked  at  the 
rocky  point  hard  by,  and  his  skirmishers  drove  our 
people  from  their  position  behind  the  dwelling.  Since 
then  it  had  known  many  guests.  Howe,  Clinton, 
Kniphausen,  Percy,  were  sheltered  by  its  roof.  The 
aged  owner,  with  his  wife  and  daughter,  remained ; 
but  they  had  always  an  officer  of  distinction  quartered 
with  them ;  and,  if  a  part  of  the  family  were  in  arms  for 
Congress,  as  is  alleged,  it  is  certain  that  others  were 
active  for  the  Crown.  Samuel  Kip,  of  Kipsburgh,  led 
a  cavalry  troop  of  his  own  tenantry  with  great  gallantry 
in  De  Lancey's  regiment ;  and,  despite  severe  wounds, 
survived  long  after  the  war,  a  heavy  pecuniary  sufferer 
by  the  cause  which,  with  most  of  the  landed  gentry  of 
New  York,  he  had  espoused." 

In  1780  it  was  held  by  Colonel  Williams,  of  the  8oth 
Royal  Regiment ;  and  here,  on  the  evening  of  the  igth  of 
September,  he  gave  a  dinner  to  Sir  Henry  Clinton  and 
his  staff,  as  a  parting  compliment  to  Andre.  The  aged 
owner  of  the  house  was  present ;  and,  when  the  Revo- 
lution was  over,  he  described  the  scene  and  the  inci- 
dents of  that  dinner.  At  the  table  Sir  Henry  Clinton 
announced  the  departure  of  Andre,  next  morning,  on  a 
secret  and  most  important  expedition,  and  added  (what 
we  have  never  seen  mentioned  in  any  other  account, 
and  showing  what  was  to  have  been  Andre's  re- 
ward), "  Plain  John  Andre  will  come  back  Sir  John 
Andre." 

Andre — it  was  said  by  Mr.  Kip — was  evidently  de- 
pressed, and  took  but  little  part  in  the  merriment  about 
him  ;  and  when,  in  his  turn,  it  became  necessary  for  him 
to  sing,  he  gave  the  favorite  military  chanson  attributed 
to  Wolfe,  who  sang  it  on  the  eve  of  the  battle  of  Que- 
bec, in  which  he  died  :— 

*  "  Life  of  Andr6,"  p.  267. 


IX    THE    01. DEN    TIME.  25 

Why,  soldiers,  why 

Should  we  be  melancholy,  boys  ? 

Why,  soldiers,  why, 

Whose  business  'tis  to  die  ! 

For  should  next  campaign 

Send  us  to  Him  who  made  us,  boys, 

We're  free  from  pain  ; 

But  should  we  remain, 

A  bottle  and  kind  landlady 

Makes  all  well  again. 

His  biographer,  after  copying  this  account,  adds : 
"  How  brilliant  soever  the  company,  how  cheerful  the 
repast,  its  memory  must  ever  have  been  fraught  with 
sadness  to  both  host  and  .guests.  It  was  the  last  occa- 
sion of  Andre's  meeting  his  comrades  in  life.  Four 
short  days  gone,  the  hands  then  clasped  by  friendship 
were  fettered  by  hostile  bonds ;  yet  nine  days  more, 
and  the  darling  of  the  army,  the  youthful  hero  of  the 
hour,  had  dangled  from  a  gibbet."  * 

After  the  Revolution  the  place  remained  in  its  own- 
er's possession,  for  his  age  had  fortunately  prevented 
him  from  taking  any  active  part  in  the  contest.  And 
when  Washington,  in  the  hour  of  his  triumph,  returned 
to  New  York,  he  went  out  to  visit  again  those  who,  in 
1776,  had  been  his  involuntary  hosts.  Dr.  Francis 
relates  an  interesting  little  incident  which  occurred  at 
the  visit :  "  On  the  old  road  towards  Kingsbridge,  on 
the  eastern  side  of  the  island,  was  the  well-known 
Kip's  Farm,  pre-eminently  distinguished  for  its  grateful 
fruits  —the  plum,  the  peach,  the  pear,  and  the  apple— 
and  for  its  choice  culture  of  the  rosacece.  Here  the  elite 
often  repaired,  and  here  our  Washington,  now  invested 
with  Presidential  honors,  made  an  excursion,  and  was 
presented  with  the  rosa  gallica,  an  exotic  first  intro- 
duced into  this  country  in  this  garden — fit  emblem 

*  "  Life  of  Andre,"  p.  268. 


26  NEW    YORK    SOCIETY 

of  that  memorable  union  of  France  and  the  American 
colonies  in  the  cause  of  republican  freedom."  * 

In  1851  this  old  place  was  demolished.  It  had  then 
stood  two  hundred  and  twelve  years,  and  was  the 
oldest  house  on  the  island.  It  was  swallowed  up  by 
the  growth  of  the  mighty  metropolis,  and  Thirty-fifth 
street  runs  over  the  spot  where  once  stood  the  old 
mansion.  A  short  time  after  it  was  deserted,  the  writer 
made  his  last  visit  to  it,  while  most  of  it  was  still  stand- 
ing, and  the  stone  coat-of-arms  over  the  hall-door  was 
projecting  from  the  half-demolished  wall.  As  he  stood 
in  the  old  dining-room,  there  came  back  to  him  visions 
of  the  many  noble  and  chivalrous  men  who,  in  the  last 
two  centuries,  had  feasted  within  its  walls.  But  all 
these,  like  the  place  itself,  now  live  only  in  the  records 
of  the  past. 

Such  was  life  in  those  early  days  among  the  colonial 
families  in  the  country  and  the  city.  It  was  simple  and 
unostentatious,  yet  marked  by  an  affluence  of  every- 
thing which  could  minister  to  comfort,  and  also  a  de- 
gree of  elegance  in  the  surroundings  which  created  a 
feeling  of  true  refinement.  Society  was  easy  and 
natural,  without  the  struggle  for  precedence  which 
now  is  so  universal;  for  then  every  one's  antecedents 
were  known,  and  their  positions  were  fixed.  The  in- 
termarriages, which  for  more  than  a  century  were  tak- 
ing place  between  the  landed  families,  bound  them 
together  and  promoted  a  harmony  of  feeling  now  not 
often  seen.  There  were,  in  that  day,  such  things  as 
old  associations,  and  men  lived  in  the  past,  instead  of, 
as  in  these  times,  looking  only  to  the  future. 

The  system  of  slavery,  too,  which  prevailed,  added 
to  the  ease  of  domestic  life.  Negro  slaves,  at  an  early 

*  "Old  New  York" — Anniversary  Discourse  before  the  New  York  Historical 
Society,  Nov.  17,  1857,  by  John  W.  Francis,  M.D.,  LL.D. 


IX    THE    OLDEX    TIME.  2 7 

day,  had  been  introduced  into  the  colony,  and  every 
family  of  standing  possessed  some.  They  were  em- 
ployed but  little  as  field-laborers,  but  every  household 
had  a  few  who  were  domestic  servants.  Like  Abra- 
ham's servants,  they  were  all  "  born  in  the  house." 
They  shared  the  same  religious  instruction  with  the 
children  of  the  family,  and  felt,  in  every  respect,  as  if 
they  were  members  of  it.  This  mild  form  of  slavery 
was  like  the  system  which  existed  under  the  tents  of 
the  patriarchs  on  the  plains  of  Mamre,  and  there  cer- 
tainly never  were  happier  people  than  those  "  men- 
servants  and  maid -servants."  They  were  seldom 
separated  from  their  families,  or  sold.  The  latter  was  re- 
served as  an  extreme  case  for  the  incorrigible,  and  a  pun- 
ishment to  which  it  was  hardly  ever  necessary  to  resort. 
The  clansmen  of  Scotland  could  not  take  more  pride 
in  the  prosperity  of  their  chief's  family  than  did  these 
'sable  retainers  in  New  Amsterdam.  In  domestic  af- 
fairs they  assumed  a  great  freedom  of  speech,  and,  in 
fact,  family  affairs  were  discussed  and  settled  as  fully 
in  the  kitchen  as  in  the  parlor.  The  older  servants, 
indeed,  exercised  as  full  control  over  the  children  of 
the  family  as  did  their  parents.  As  each  black  child 
attained  the  age  of  six  or  seven  years,  it  was  formally 
presented  to  a  son  or  daughter  of  the  family,  and  was 
his  or  her  particular  attendant.  This  union  continued 
often  through  life,  and  of  stronger  instances  of  fidelity 
we  have  never  heard  than  were  exhibited  in  some  of 
these  cases.  Fidelity  and  affection,  indeed,  formed  the 
bond  between  master  and  slave,  to  a  degree  which  can 
never  exist  in  this  day  with  hired  servants.* 

*  "  Almost  every  family  in  the  colony  owned  one  or  more  negro  servants ;  and, 
among  the  richer  classes,  their  number  was  considered  a  certain  evidence  of  their 
master's  easy  circumstances.  About  the  year  1703 — a  period  of  prosperity  in  wealth 
and  social  refinement  with  the  Dutch  of  New  Amsterdam — the  Widow  Van  Court- 
landt  held  five  male  slaves,  two  female,  and  two  children ;  Colonel  De  Peyster  had 


28  NEW    YORK    SOCIETY 

This  state  of  things  continued  far  down  into  the 
present  century.  In  the  writer's  early  day  his  father 
owned  slaves  for  domestic  servants,  and  he  well  re- 
members, when  visiting  the  place  of  a  relative  on  the 
Hudson  River,  seeing  the  number  of  slaves  about  the 
house.  At  that  time,  however,  the  system  was  just 
going  out;  it  had  lost  its  interesting  features,  and  the 
slaves,  still  remaining  at  these  old  places,  had  become 
a  source  of  care  and  anxiety  to  their  owners. 

The  charm  of  life  in  that  day  was  its  stability. 
There  was  no  chance  then  for  parvemiism — no  stocks 
in  which  to  dabble,  no  sudden  fortunes  made.  There 
was  but  little  commerce  between  the  colony  and  the 
mother-country,  and  men  who  embarked  in  this  busi- 
ness were  contented  to  spend  their  lives  in  acquiring  a 
competence.  They  never  aspired  to  rival  the  landed 
families.  With  the  latter,  life  flowed  on  from  one  gen- 
eration to  another  in  the  same  even  way.  They  lived 
on  their  broad  lands,  and,  when  they  died,  the  eldest 
son  inherited  the  family  residence,  while  the  others 
were  portioned  off  with  farms  belonging  to  the  estate, 
but  which  it  could  well  spare.  On  their  carriages  and 
their  silver  were  their  arms,  which  they  had  brought 
with  them  from  Europe,  by  which  every  one  knew 
them,  which  were  used  as  matters  of  course,  and  were 
distinctions  no  one  ventured  to  assume  unless  entitled 
to  them.  Sometimes  these  were  carved  in  stone  and 
placed  over  their  doors.  This  was  the  case  with  the 
Walton  House,  which  we  believe  is  still  standing  in 
Franklin  Square  (Pearl  street) ;  and,  as  we  have  al- 
ready mentioned,  with  the  Kip's  Bay  House.  The 
windows  of  the  first  Dutch  church  built  in  New  York 

the  same  number  ;  William  Beekman,  two  ;  Rip  Van  Dam,  six  ;  Mrs.  Stuyvesant, 
five;  Mrs.  Kip,  seven;  David  Provoost,  three,  &c." — Stone's  "History of  New 
York,"  p.  90. 


IN    THE    OLDEN    TIME.  2Q 

were  filled  with  the  arms  of  the  families  at  whose 
expense  it  was  erected. 

In  1774,  John  Adams,  on  his  way  to  attend  the  first 
Congress,  stopped  in  New  York.  The  honest  Bos- 
tonian  was  very  much  struck  with  "the  opulence  and 
splendor  of  the  city,"  and  "the  elegance  of  their  mode 
of  living,"  and,  in  his  Journal,  freely  records  his  admi- 
ration. He  speaks  of  "  the  elegant  c'ountry-seats  on 
the  island ;  "  "  the  Broad  Way,  a  fine  street,  very  wide, 
and  in  a  right  line  from  'one  end  to  the  other  of  the 
city;"  "the  magnificent  new  church  then  building, 
which  was  to  cost  ,£20,000 ; "  the  Bowling  Green, 
which  he  describes  as  "the  beautiful  ellipse  of  land, 
railed  in  with  solid  iron,  in  the  centre  of  which  is  a 
statue  of  His  Majesty  on  horseback,  very  large,  of 
solid  lead,  gilded  with  gold,  on  a  pedestal  of  marble, 
very  high."  He  records  that  "the  streets  of  the  town 
are  vastly  more  regular  and  elegant  than  those  of  Bos- 
ton, and  the  houses  are  more  grand,  as  well  as  neat." 

The  most  amusing  display  is  when  he  is  invited  to 
one  of  these  country-seats,  "near  Hudson's  River." 
He  writes:  "A  more  elegant  breakfast  I  never  saw; 
rich  plate,  a  very  large  silver  coffee-pot,  a  very  large 
silver  tea-pot,  napkins  of  the  very  finest  materials, 
toast  and  bread  and  butter  in  great  perfection.  After 
breakfast  a  plate  of  beautiful  peaches,  another  of  pears, 
and  a  muskmelon,  were  placed  on  the  table." 

It  is  evident,  however,  from  his  Journal,  that  he  saw 
little  of  the  best  families.  He  was  not  in  a  situation  to 
be  feted  by  them,  for  they  had  no  sympathy  with  the 
object  of  his  journey.  His  principal  entertainers  were 
two  lawyers  —  Scott  and  Smith  —  who  had  grown 
wealthy  by  their  profession.  Among  all  he  mentions 
as  extending  civilities  to  him,  the  only  persons  belong- 
ing to  the  aristocracy  of  the  city  were  some  members 


3O  NEW    YORK    SOCIETY 

of  the  Livingston  family,  who,  even  then,  were  putting 
themselves  forward  as  leaders  in  the  coming  move- 
ment. 

The  Revolution  broke  up  and  swept  away  this  social 
system.  It  ruined  and  drove  off  half  the  gentry  of  the 
province.  The  social  history,  indeed,  of  that  event 
has  never  been  written,  and  never  will  be.  The  con- 
querors wrote  the  story,  and  they  were  mostly  "  new 
men,"  who  had  as  much  love  for  those  they  dispos- 
sessed as  the  Puritans  had  for  the  Cavaliers  of  Eng- 
land, whom,  for  a  time,  they  displaced.  In  a  passage 
we  have  quoted  from  Sargent's  "Life  of  Andre,"  the 
author  says :  "  Most  of  the  landed  gentry  of  New  York 
espoused  the  royal  cause."  And  it  was  natural  that  it 
should  be  so,  for  most  of  them  had  for  generations 
held  office  under  the  Crown.  Their  habits  of  life,  too, 
had  trained  them  to  tastes  which  had  no  sympathy 
with  the  levelling  doctrines  inaugurated  by  the  new 
movement.  They  accordingly  rallied  around  the  king's 
standard;  and,  when  it  went  down,  they  went  down 
with  it,  and,  in  many  cases,  their  names  were  blotted 
out  of  the  land. 

We  once  read,  in  an  old  number  of  Blackwood's 
Magazine,  some  discussion  about  the  impolitic  course 
pursued  by  England  towards  her  colonies.  The  re- 
marks about  the  manner  in  which  she  lost  her  Ameri- 
can colonies  were  peculiarly  judicious.  The  writer 
says  the  Government  should  have  formed  an  aristo- 
cracy in  America,  by  giving  titles,  and  thus  gathering 
the  great  landed  proprietors  about  the  throne  by  new 
ties.  These  extensive  landholders,  previous  to  the 
Revolution,  were  as  able  to  keep  up  the  dignity  of  a 
title  as  were  the  English  nobility  of  that  day ;  and  the 
effect  which  would  have  been  produced,  in  the  strength- 
ening of  their  loyalty,  is  obvious.  Had  the  head  of 


IN    THE    OLDEN    TIME.  31 

the  Livingston  family  been  created  Earl  of  Clermont, 
and  that  of  the  Lawrences  been  made  Lord  Newtown, 
would  they  have  taken  the  side  of  the  Revolutionists  ? 
We  trow  not.  Instead  of  this,  these  powerful  landed 
families  were  neglected,  until  some  of  them  became 
embittered  against  the  Government.  No  title,  as  a 
mark  of  royal  favor,  was  given  to  a  single  American, 
except  a  baronetcy  to  Sir  William  Johnson. 

Of  a  few  landed  families  who  took  the  popular  side, 
perhaps  the  Livingstons  and  Schuylers  occupied  the 
leading  position.  The  former  had  not  been  in  favor 
with  the  Government,  but  were  the  political  antagonists 
of  the  De  Lanceys,  by  whom  they  were  excluded  from 
office.  They  therefore  welcomed  the  new  order  of 
things. 

Religion,  in  those  days,  had  a  good  deal  to  do  with 
the  state  of  parties.  As  far  back  as  1 745,  the  De  Lan- 
ceys were  the  leaders  of  the  Church  of  England  party, 
and  the  Livingstons  of  the  Dissenters.  Religious  bit- 
terness was  added,  therefore,  to  that  which  was  politi- 
cal. "  In  1769"  (says  Stone,  in  his  "  Life  of  Sir  Wil- 
liam Johnson"),  "  the  contest  was  between  the  Church 
party  and  the  Dissenters,  the  former  being  led  by  the 
De  Lanceys  and  the  latter  by  the  Livingstons.  The 
Church,  having  the  support  of  the  mercantile  and  ma- 
sonic interests,  was  triumphant ;  and  John  Cruger, 
James  De  Lancey,  Jacob  Walton,  and  James  Jauncey, 
were  elected  by  the  city."  During  the  election  a  song 
was  published  in  the  German  language,  which  became 
very  popular  with  the  Germans,  the  chorus  of  which 
was : 

"  Maester  Cruger,  De  Lancey, 
Maester  Walton  and  Jauncey." 

"  The  De  Lancey  interest,"  wrote  Hugh  Wallace,  a 


32  NEW    YORK    SOCIETY 

member  of  the  Council,  to  Sir  William  Johnson,  "pre- 
vails in  the  House  greatly,  and  they  have  given  the 
Livingstons'  interest  proof  of  it,  by  dismissing  P.  Liv- 
ingston the  House,  as  a  non-resident."  It  was  an  old 
feud,  therefore,  which,  at  the  Revolution,  induced  them 
to  take  different  sides. 

To  the  popular  side,  also,  went  the  Jays,  the  Law- 
rences, a  portion  of  the  Van  Courtlandts,  who  were 
divided,  a  part  of  the  Morris  family,  which  was  also 
divided  (while  Lewis  Morris  was  one  of  the  signers  of 
the  Declaration  of  Independence,  his  brother,  Staats 
Morris,  was  a  General  in  the  British  army,  and  married 
the  Dowager  Duchess  of  Gordon),  the  Beekmans,  and 
some  few  others.  The  "  Patroon  "-  —  Mr.  Van  Rensse- 
laer — was  fortunately  a  minor,  and  therefore,  not  being 
obliged  to  take  either  side,  saved  his  manor.  Many 
of  the  prominent  leaders  were  from  new  families,  made 
by  the  Revolution.  An  upturning  of  this  kind  is  the 
time  for  new  men.  Peculiar  circumstances  brought 
some  forward  who  otherwise  would  have  had  no  avenue 
for  action  opened  before  them.  Alexander  Hamilton, 
for  example,  had  just  arrived  in  New  York,  a  young 
man  from  the  West  Indies,  when  the  popular  outbreak 
gave  him,  at  a  public  meeting,  an  opportunity  of  exhib- 
iting his  peculiar  talents. 

The  history  of  a  single  family  will  show  the  course 
of  events.  Probably  the  most  powerful  family  in  the 
State,  before  the  Revolution,  was  that  of  the  De  Lan- 
ceys.  Descended  from  the  ancienne  noblesse  of  France, 
and  holding  large  possessions,  they  had  exerted  a 
greater  influence  in  the  colony  than  any  other  family. 
James  De  Lancey  administered  the  government  of  the 
colony  for  many  years,  till  his  death  in  1760.  Most  of 
the  younger  members  of  the  family  were  in  the  British 
army,  previous  to  the  Revolution.  When  that  convul- 


IN    THE    OLDEX    TIME.  33 

sion  took  place,  they,  of  course,  remained  loyal,  and 
became  leaders  on  that  side.  Oliver  De  Lancey  was 
a  Brigadier-General,  and  organized  the  celebrated 
corps  styled  "  De  Lancey's  Battalion."  His  fine  man- 
sion at  Bloomingdale  was  burned,  in  consequence  of 
his  adherence  to  the  royal  cause.  They  forfeited  their 
broad  lands,  and  their  names  appeared  no  more  in  the 
future  history  of  the  State.  Some  fled  to  England, 
where  they  held  high  offices,  and  their  tombs  are  now 
to  be  seen  in  the  choir  of  Beverley  Minster.  Sir 
William  De  Lancey  died  at  Waterloo,  on  the  staff  of 
the  Duke  of  Wellington.*  Just  two  months  previous, 
he  had  been  married  to  a  daughter  of  Sir  Benjamin 
Hall ;  and  his  friend  Sir  Walter  Scott,  thus  alludes  to 
him  in  his  ode,  "The  Field  of  Waterloo": 

De  Lancey  changed  Love's  bridal  wreath 
For  laurels  from  the  hand  of  death. 

The  son  of  General  De  Lancey,  Oliver  De  Lancey, 
Jr.,  who  succeeded  Andre  as  Adjutant-General  of  the 
British  army  in  America,  rose  through  the  grade  of 
Lieutenant-General  to  that  of  General,  and  died,  at  the 

*  The  Duke  of  Wellington,  in  conversation,  gave  this  account  of  De  Lancey's 
death  :  — 

"  De  Lancey  was  with  me  and  speaking  to  me  when  he  was  struck.  We  were 
on  a  point  of  land  that  overlooked  the  plain,  and  I  had  just  been  warned  off  by 
some  soldiers  (but  as  I  saw  well  from  it,  and  as  two  divisions  were  engaging  below, 
I  had  said,  '  Never  mind,'),  when  a  ball  came  leaping  along  en  ricochet,  as  it  is  call- 
ed, and  striking  him  on  the  back,  sent  him  many  yards  over  the  head  of  his  horse. 
He  fell  on  his  face,  and  bounded  upward  and  fell  again.  All  the  staff  dismounted 
and  ran  to  him ;  and  when  I  came  up,  he  said,  '  Pray  tell  them  to  leave  me  and  let 
me  die  in  peace.'  I  had  him  conveyed  to  the  rear,  and  two  days  afterwards,  when, 
on  my  return  from  Brussels,  I  saw  him  in  a  barn,  he  spoke  with  such  strength,  that 
I  said  (for  1'  had  reported  him  among  the  killed),  '  Why,  De  Lancey,  you  will  have 
the  advantage  of  Sir  Concly  in  Castle  Rockrent  ;  you  will  know  what  your  friends 
said  of  you  after  death.'  'I  hope  I  shall,'  he  replied.  Poor  fellow!  We  had 
known  each  other  ever  since  we  were  boys.  But  I  had  no  time  to  be  sorry;  I  went 
on  with  the  army  and  never  saw  him  again." — "  Recollections,"  by  Samuel  Rogers. 
London,  1859. 

5 


34  NEW    YORK    SOCIKTY 

beginning  of  this  century,  nearly  at  the  head  of  the 
English  army-list. 

In  1847  the  late  Bishop  of  Western  New  York 
(William  Heathcote  De  Lancey)  told  the  writer  a  curi- 
ous story  of  his  recovery  of  some  of  their  old  family 
papers.  In  the  spring  of  that  year,  being  in  New 
York,  a  package  was  handed  to  the  servant  at  the 
door  by  an  old  gentleman,  on  opening  which  the  Bishop 
found  an  anonymous  letter  directed  to  him.  The  writer 
stated  that,  being  in  England  between  thirty  and  forty 
years  before,  he  found  some  papers  relating  to  the  De 
Lancey  family  among  some  waste  paper  in  the  house 
where  he  was  staying  ;  that  he  had  preserved  them, 
and,  seeing  by  the  newspapers  that  the  Bishop  was  in 
the  city,  he  now  enclosed  them  to  him.  These  the 
Bishop  found  to  be :  ist,  the  commission  of  James  De 
Lancey  as  Lieutenant-Governor  of  the  colony  ;  2d,  his 
commission  as  Chief-Justice  of  the  colony  ;  ^d,  the  free- 
dom of  the  city  of  New  York,  voted  to  one  of  the  fami- 
ly in  1730;  4th,  a  map  of  the  lands  owned  by  them  in 
Westchester  county  and  on  New  York  Island,  pre- 
pared by  the  Bishop's  grandfather.  He  advertised  in 
the  New  York  papers,  requesting  an  interview  with  his 
unknown  correspondent,  but  there  was  no  response, 
and  he  heard  no  more  from  him. 

Some  branches  of  this  family  remained  in  New  York, 
and  we  cannot  point  to  a  more  striking  evidence  of  the 
change  wrought  by  the  Revolution  than  the  fact  that, 
since  that  event,  the  name  of  De  Lancey,  once  so 
prominent,  is  never  found  in  the  records  of  the  Govern- 
ment. It  is  in  the  Church  only  that  it  has  acquired 
eminence,  in  the  person  of  the  former  distinguished 
Bishop  of  Western  New  York. 

This  is  the  kind  of  story  which  might  be  told  of 
many  other  loyalist  families.  Ruined  by  confiscations, 


IN    THE    OLDEN    TIME.  35 

they  faded  out  of  sight,  and,  being  excluded  from  po- 
litical office,  they  were  forgotten,  and  their  very  names 
would  sound  strange  in  the  ears  of  the  present  gener- 
ation of  New  Yorkers.  Many  years  ago,  in  the  old 
country-house  of  a  relative,  the  writer  amused  some 
days  of  a  summer  vacation  by  bringing  down  from  the 
dust  of  a  garret,  where  they  had  reposed  for  two  gen- 
erations, the  letters  of  one  of  these  refugees,  who,  at 
the  beginning  of  the  Revolution,  was  obliged  to  seek 
safety  on  board  a  British  ship-of-war  off  New  York 
harbor  (from  whence  he  writes  his  farewell,  commend- 
ing his  wife  and  children  to  the  care  of  the  family),  and 
then  made  his  home  in  England,  until,  as  he  hoped, 
"  these  calamities  be  overpast."  It  was  sad  to  read 
his  speculations,  as  night  after  night  he  attended  the 
debates  in  Parliament  and  watched  the  progress  of  the 
war,  and,  to  the  last,  confidently  trusted  in  the  success 
of  the  royal  arms,  which  alone  could  replace  him  in  the 
position  from  which  he  had  been  driven  into  exile. 
When  these  hopes  were  ultimately  crushed,  a  high  ap- 
pointment was  offered  him  by  Government,  but  he  pre- 
ferred to  return  to  his  own  land  to  share  the  straitened 
circumstances  of  his  family,  and  be  buried  with  his 
fathers. 

The  withdrawal  of  so  many  of  the  gentry  from  the 
country,  and  the  worldly  ruin  of  so  many  more,  was 
necessarily  detrimental  to  its  social  refinement.  It  was 
taking  away  the  high-toned  dignity  of  the  landed  pro- 
prietors, and  substituting  in  its  place  the  restless  aspira- 
tions of  men  who  had  to  make  their  fortunes  and  posi- 
tion, and  get  forward  in  life.  Society  lost,  therefore, 
much  of  its  ease  and  gracefulness.  Mrs.  Grant,  to 
whose  work  we  have  already  alluded,  who  in  her  youth 
had  seen  New  York  society  as  far  back  as  1760,  and 
lived  to  know  what  it  was  after  the  peace,  thus  speaks 


36  NEW    YORK    SOCIETY 

of  the  change:  "Mildness  of  manners,  refinement  of 
mind,  and  all  the  softer  virtues  that  spring  up  in  the 
cultivated  paths  of  social  life,  nurtured  by  generous 
affections,  were  undoubtedly  to  be  found  in  the  un- 
happy loyalists.  .  .  .  Certainly,  however  neces- 
sary the  ruling  powers  might  find  it  to  carry  their  sys- 
tem of  exile  into  execution,  it  has  occasioned  to  the 
country  an  irreparable  privation.  What  the  loss  of 
the  Huguenots  was  to  commerce  and  manufactures  in 
France,  that  of  the  loyalists  was  to  religion,  literature, 
and  amenity  in  America.  The  silken  threads  were 
drawn  out  of  the  mixed  web  of  society,  which  has  ever 
since  been  comparatively  coarse  and  homely."* 

This  is  somewhat  of  an  exaggeration.  The  tone  of 
society  was,  indeed,  impaired,  but  not  lost.  There 
were  still  enough  of  the  old  families  remaining  to  give 
it  dignity,  at  least  for  another  generation.  The  com- 
munity could  not  suddenly  become  democratic,  or  throw 
off  all  its  old  associations  and  habits  of  reverence.  As 
a  writer  on  that  day  says,  people  were  •"  habituated  to 
take  off  their  hats  to  gentlemen  who  were  got  up  re- 
gardless of  expense,  and  who  rode  about  in  chariots 
drawn  by  four  horses."  It  took  a  long  while  for  the 
community  to  learn  to  act  on  the  maxim  that  "  all  men 
are  created  equal."  Not,  indeed,  until  those  were 
swept  away  who  had  lived  in  the  days  of  the  Revolu- 
tion, did  this  downward  tendency  become  very  evident. 
Simultaneously,  too,  with  their  departure  came  a  set 
of  the  noiiveaux  riches,  which  the  growing  facilities  of 
New  York  for  making  commercial  fortunes  brought 
forward,  and  thus,  by  degrees,  was  ushered  in — the 
age  of  gaudy  wealth. 

The  final  blow,  indeed,  to  this  stately  old  society 
was  given  by  the  French  Revolution.  We  know  how 

*    "American  Lady,"  p.  330. 


IN    THE    OLDEN    TIME.  37 

everything"  dignified  in  society  was  then  swept  away 
in  the  wild  fury  of  democracy,  but  the  present  genera- 
tion cannot  conceive  of  the  intense  feeling  which  that 
event  produced  in  our  own  country.  France  had  been 
our  old  ally,  England  our  old  foe.  We  must  side  with 
the  former  in  her  struggles  against  tyranny.  It  be- 
came a  political  test.  The  Republicans  adopted  it,  and 
insensibly  there  seemed  to  grow  up  the  idea  that  re- 
finement and  courtesy  in  life  were  at  variance  with  the 
true  party-spirit.  In  this  way  democratic  rudeness 
crept  into  social  life,  and  took  the  place  of  the  aristo- 
cratic element  of  former  days.  Gradually  it  went  down 
into  the  lower  strata  of  society,  till  all  that  reverence 
which  once  characterized  it  was  gone. 

The  manners  of  an  individual  at  last  became  an  evi- 
dence of  his  political  views.  Goodrich,  in  his  "  Recol- 
lections," speaking  on  this  very  point,  gives  an  amusing 
instance  of  it.  A  clergyman  in  Connecticut,  who  was 
noted  for  his  wit,  riding  along-  one  summer  day,  came 
to  a  brook,  where  he  paused  to  let  his  horse  drink. 
Just  then  a  stranger  rode  into  the  stream  from  the  op- 
posite direction,  and,  as  his  horse  began  to  drink  also, 
the  two  men  were  brought  face  to  face. 

"  How  are  you,  priest  ? "  said  the  stranger. 

"  How  are  you,  democrat  ?  "  inquired  the  parson. 

"  How.do  you  know  I  am  a  democrat?  "  said  one. 

"  How  do  you  know  I  am  &  priest  ?  "  said  the  other. 

"  I  know  you  to  be  a  priest  by  your  dress,"  said  the 


stranger. 


"And  I  know  you  to  be  a  democrat  by  your  ad- 
dress" said  the  parson. 

Even  the  dress  was  made  the  exponent  of  party 
views,  as  much  as  it  had  been  by  the  Cavaliers  and 
Puritans  of  England.  As  republican  principles  gained 
ground,  large  wigs  and  powder,  cocked  hats,  breeches 


3»  NEW    YORK    SOCIETY 

and  shoe-buckles,  were  replaced  by  short  hair,  panta- 
loons, and  shoe-strings.  It  is  said  that  the  Marquis 
de  Breze,  master  of  ceremonies  at  Versailles,  nearly 
died  of  fright  at  the  first  pair  of  shoes,  divested  of 
buckles,  which  he  saw  on  the  feet  of  a  revolutionary 
minister  ascending  the  stairs  to  a  royal  levee.  He 
rushed  over  to  Dumouriez,  then  Minister  of  War. 
"He  is  actually  entering,"  exclajmed  the  Marquis, 
"  with  ribbons  in  his  shoes  !  "  Dumouriez,  himself  one 
of  the  incendiaries  of  the  Revolution,  solemnly  said, 
"  Tout  est  fini  !  "  — "  The  game  is  up  ;  the  monarchy  is 
gone."  And  so  it  was.  This  was  only  one  of  the 
signs  of  the  times.  Buckles  and  kings  were  extin- 
guished together. 

Such  being  the  feelings  of  the  sans  culottes  in  France, 
the  favorers  of  Jacobinism  in  this  country  were  not 
slow  to  imitate  them.  Jefferson  eschewed  breeches 
and  wore  pantaloons.  He  adopted  leather  strings  in 
his  shoes  instead  of  buckles,  and  his  admirers  trum- 
peted it  as  a  proof  of  democratic  simplicity.  Wash- 
ington rode  to  the  Capitol  in  a  carriage  drawn  by  four 
cream-colored  horses  with  servants  in  livery.  All  this 
his  successor  gave  up,  and  even  abolished  the  Presi- 
dent's levees,  the  latter  of  which  were  afterwards  re- 
stored by  Mrs.  Madison.  Thus  the  dress,  which  had 
for  generations  been  the  sign  and  symbol  of  3.  gentle- 
man, gradually  waned  away,  till  society  reached  that 
charming  state  of  equality  in  which  it  became  impos- 
sible, by  any  outward  costume,  to  distinguish  masters 
from  servants.  John  Jay  says,  in  one  of  his  letters, 
that  with  small-clothes  and  buckles  the  high  tone  of 
society  departed. 

In  the  writer's  early  day  this  system  of  the  past  was 
just  going  out.  Wigs  and  powder  and  queues,  breeches 
and  buckles,  still  lingered  among  the  older  gentlemen 


IN    THE    OLDEN    TIME.  39 

—vestiges  of  an  age  which  was  just  vanishing  away. 
But  the  high-toned  feeling  of  the  last  century  was  still 
in  the  ascendant,  and  had  not  yet  succumbed  to  the 
\vorship  of  mammon  which  characterizes  this  age. 
There  was  still  in  New  York  a  reverence  for  the  colo- 
nial families ;  and  the  prominent  political  men — like  Du- 
ane,  Clinton,  Golden,  Radcliff,  Hoffman,  and  Living- 
ston— were  generally  gentlemen  by  birth  and  social 
standing.  The  time  had  not  yet  come  when  this  was 
to  be  an  objection  to  an  individual  in  a  political  career. 
The  leaders  were  men  whose  names  were  historical  in 
the  state,  and  they  influenced  society.  The  old  fami- 
lies still  formed  an  association  among  themselves,  and 
intermarried  one  generation  after  another.  Society 
was  therefore  very  restricted.  The  writer  remembers, 
in  his  childhood,  when  he  went  out  with  his  father  for 
his  usual  afternoon  drive,  he  knew  every  carriage  they 
met  on  the  avenues. 

The  gentlemen  of  that  day  knew  each  other  well,  for 
they  had  grown  up  together,  and  their  associations  in 
the  past  were  the  same.  Yet,  what  friendships  for 
after-life  did  these  associations  form  !  How  different 
this  from  the  intimacy  between  Mr.  Smith  and  Mr. 
Thompson,  when  they  knew  nothing  of  each  other's 
antecedents,  have  no  subjects  in  common  but  the  mo- 
ney market,  and  never  heard  of  each  other  until  the 
last  year,  when  some  lucky  speculation  in  stocks  raised 
them  from  their  "low  estate,"  and  enabled  them  to 
purchase  houses  "  up-town,"  and  set  up  their  car- 
riages ! 

There  was  in  that  day  none  of  the  show  and  glitter 
of  modern  times  ;  but  there  was  with  many  of  these 
families,  particularly  with  those  who  had  retained  their 
landed  estates,  and  were  still  living  in  their  old  family 
homes,  an  elegance  which  has  never  been  rivalled  in 


4-O  NEW    YORK    SOCIETY 

other  parts  of  the  country.  In  his  early  days  the 
writer  has  been  much  at  the  South ;  has  stayed  at 
Mount  Vernon,  when  it  was  yet  held  by  the  Washing- 
tons  ;  with  Lord  Fairfax's  family  at  Ashgrove  and  Van- 
cluse ;  with  the  Lees  in  Virginia,  and  with  the  aristo- 
cratic planters  of  South  Carolina  ;  but  he  has  never 
elsewhere  seen  such  elegance  of  living  as  was  formerly 
exhibited  by  the  old  families  of  New  York. 

Gentlemen  then  were  great  diners-out.  Their  asso- 
ciations naturally  led  to  this  kind  of  intimacy,  when 
almost  the  same  set  constantly  met  together.  Giving 
dinners  was  then  a  science,  and  a  gentleman  took  as 
much  pride  in  the  excellence  of  his  wine-cellar  as  he 
did  in  his  equipage  or  his  library.  This  had  its  evils, 
it  is  true,  and  led  to  long  sittings  over  the  table,  and 
an  excess  of  conviviality  which  modern  customs  have 
fortunately  corrected. 

There  was  a  punctiliousness,  too,  in  their  intercourse, 
even  among  the  most  intimate,  which  formed  a  strange 
contrast  to  the  familiarity  of  modern  society.  Gentle- 
men were  guarded  in  what  they  said  to  each  other,  for 
those  were  duelling  days,  and  a  hasty  speech  had  to 
be  atoned  for  at  Hoboken.  Stories  are  still  handed 
down  of  disputes  at  the  dinner-table  which  led  to  hos- 
tile meetings,  but  which,  in  our  day,  would  not  have 
been  remembered  next  morning.  In  an  obituary  sketch 
of  one  of  this  set,  published  at  his  death  twenty-five 
years  ago,  when  speaking  of  the  high  tone  which  then 
characterized  society,  the  writer  said:  "Perhaps  the 
liability,  which  then  existed,  of  being  held,  personally 
answerable  for  their  words,  false  as  the  principle  may 
have  been,  produced  a  courtesy  not  known  in  these 
days." 

One  thing  is  certain — that  there  was  a  high  tone 
prevailing  at  that  time,  which  is  now  nowhere  seen. 


IN    THE    OLDEN    TIME.  4! 

The  community  then  looked' up  to  the  public  men  with 
a  degree  of  reverence  which  has  never  been  felt  for 
those  who  succeeded  them.  They  were  the  last  of  a 
race  which  does  not  now  exist.  With  them  died  the 
stateliness  of  colonial  times.  Wealth  came  in  and 
created  a  social  distinction  which  took  the  place  of 
family,  and  thus  society  became  vulgarized. 

During  the  last  year  we  have  witnessed  the  depar- 
ture of  one — Gulian  C.  Verplanck — who  was,  perhaps, 
the  last  prominent  member  of  the  generation  which 
has  gone.  Where  can  we  point  to  any  one  of  those 
now  living,  like  him,  surrounded  by  the  elevating  asso- 
ciations of  the  past,  distinguished  in  public  life,  and  a 
ripe  scholar  in  literature  and  theology  ?  The  old  his- 
torical names  of  Jay  and  Duer  and  Hoffman,  and  a  few 
more  of  colonial  times,  are  still  upheld  among  us  by 
their  sons,  who  are  showing,  in  the  third  generation, 
the  high  talents  of  those  who  had  gone  before  them ; 
"  but  what  are  they  among  so  many  !  " 

"  Rari  nantes  in  gurgite  vasto." 

The  influences  of  the  past  are  fast  vanishing  away, 
and  our  children  will  look  only  to  the  shadowy  future. 
The  very  rule  by  which  we  estimate  individuals  has 
been  entirely  altered.  The  inquiry  once  was,  "Who 
is  he?"  Men  now  ask  the  question,  "How  much  is 
he  worth  ?  "  Have  we  gained  by  the  change  ? 

Is  it  strange  that  the  writer  answers  in  himself  that 
description  in  Horace — "  Laudator  acti  temporis,  me 
puero?"  As  years  gather  round  him,  and  the  shadows 
deepen  in  his  path,  he  instinctively  turns  more  and 
more  from  the  "living  Present"  to  commune  with  the 
"  dead  Past."  Many,  however,  to  whom  he  has  re- 
ferred in  these  pages,  will  be  to  most  of  his  readers 


42  NEW    YORK    SOCIETY    IN    THE    OLDEN    TIME. 

only  names,  while  to  him  they  are  realities — living  and 
breathing  men ;  and,  as  he  thinks  of  them,  he  believes 
there  is  no  delusion  in  the  conviction  that,  for  elegance 
and  refinement,  for  all  the  graces  which  elevate  and 
ennoble  life,  they  have  left  no  successors.  The  out- 
ward pressure  is  now  too  democratic.  Most  of  the 
prominent  men,  also,  of  the  present  day,  want  the  asso- 
ciations of  the  past. 

As  Edward  IV.  stood  on  the  tower  of  Warwick 
Castle,  and  saw  marching  through  the  park  below  him 
the  mighty  host  of  retainers  who,  at  the  summons  of 
the  great  Earl  of  Warwick,  had  gathered  round  him, 
and  then  thought  how  powerless,  in  comparison,  were 
the  new  nobles  with  whom  he  had  attempted  to  sur- 
round his  throne,  he  is  said  to  have  muttered  to  him- 
self, "After  all,  you  cannot  make  a  great  baron  out  of 
a  new  lord !  "  And  so  we  would  say,  You  cannot  make 
out  of  the  new  millionaire  what  was  exhibited  by  the 
gentlemen  of  our  old  colonial  families  ! 

Commerce,  indeed,  is  fast  taking  the  place  of  the 
true  old  chivalry  with  all  its  high  associations.  It  is 
impossible,  in  this  country,  for  St.  Germain  to  hold  its 
own  against  the  Bourse.  Money-getting  is  the  great 
object  of  life  in  this  practical  age,  and,  every  month, 
the  words  which  Halleck  wrote  so  many  years  ago  are 
becoming  more  true : 

These  are  not  romantic  times 
So  beautiful  in  Spenser's  rhymes, 

So  dazzling  to  the  dreaming  boy  ; 
Ours  are  the  days  of  fact,  not  fable, 
Of  Knights,  but  not  of  the  Round  Table, 

Of  Baillie  Jarvis,  not  Rob  Roy. 
And  noble  name  and  cultured  land, 
Palace  and  park,  and  vassal  band, 
Are  powerless  to  notes  of  hand 

Of  Rothschild  or  the  Barings. 


TRACES 


AMERICAN  LINEAGE  IN  ENGLAND. 


RICHMOND   HII.L    HOUSE,    N.    Y.,    IN    1776. 


TRACES 

OF 

AMERICAN    LINEAGE    IN    ENGLAND. 


THEY  say  in  England  that  Burke's  Peerage  is  "  the 
Englishman's  Bible."  He  certainly  pores  over  it  with 
a  devotion  which,  had  it  been  the  Bible,  would  have 
prepared  him  to  be  a  Professor  of  Biblical  Interpreta- 
tion in  a  Theological  Seminary.  The  aristocracy  have 
this  immense  crimson-bound  volume  in  their  libraries 
because  it  gives  their  own  family  history.  The  middle 
class  parade  it  on  their  centre-tables  because  its  pos- 
session seems  in  some  way,  they  cannot  define  how, 
to  associate  them  with  the  titled  class.  Then,  if  they 
should  happen  to  see  a  live  lord,  it  is  a  great  satisfac- 
tion, on  their  return  home,  to  open  Burke  and  learn 
all  about  him.  It  makes  them  almost  feel  as  if  they 
were  acquainted  with  him. 

Burke,  it  is  true,  gives  the  history  of  these  families, 
but  then  there  is  added  to  it  an  immense  amount  of  the 
Romance  of  History.  The  old  Norman  nobility  of 
England  have  most  of  them  died  out,  and  it  is  strange 
to  see,  in  Shirley's  Noble  and  Gentle  Men  of  England, 
how  few  families  are  now  remaining,  in  the  male  line, 
of  those  who  occupied  any  prominent  position  in  the 
days  of  the  wars  of  York  and  Lancaster.  The  great 
Percy  family,  for  example,  has  three  times  become  ex- 
tinct in  the  male  line.  Then,  some  one  who  had  mar- 
ried its  heiress  took  the  name  of  Percy,  and  had  the 
title  of  Duke  of  Northumberland  revived  for  his  bene- 


46         TRACES    OF    AMERICAN    LINEAGE    IN    ENGLAND. 

fit.  The  last  time  this  occurred  was  in  1750,  when  it 
was  done  for  one  of  the  Smithson  family,  who  had 
married  the  daughter  and  only  child  of  the  last  Duke. 
Thus,  new  shoots  are  grafted  on  the  old  lines. 

Besides  this,  new  men  are  constantly  rising  up  and 
winning  their  way  into  the  upper  class,  and  these  must 
be  furnished  with  pedigrees.  So  Burke  begins  per- 
haps by  stating,  that  "one  of  this  name  flourished  in 
Kent,  temp.  Henry  III."  To  be  sure  there  is  a  dread- 
ful hiatus  between  this  imaginary  character  and  temp. 
Victories,  when  the  new  lord  makes  his  appearance, 
but  there  is  a  sort  of  uncertain  glamour  thrown  over  it 
which,  without  any  reason,  seems  to  connect  the  pres- 
ent with  the  distant  past.  Still,  with  all  these  draw- 
backs, Burke  is  a  very  valuable  record,  and  we  cannot 
understand  the  history  of  England  without  knowing 
something  of  the  history  of  its  great  families. 

Then,  besides  Burke's  Peerage  is  his  Landed  Gentry, 
a  work  of  equal  interest  and  value  to  the  historical 
student.  Many  of  these  untitled  families  have  lived 
on  their  broad  lands  since  the  Norman  conquest.  You 
turn,  for  instance,  to  the  Fitzherbert  family,  and  read 
of  the  present  proprietor  of  their  estates — "Mr.  Fitz- 
herbert is  the  26th  Lord  of  the  Manor  of  Norbury,  and 
the  loth  Lord  of  Swinnerton."  Many  of  these  families 
have  for  generations  refused  peerages,  preferring  to 
be  Old  Commoners  rather  than  New  Lords. 

The  third  volume,  to  complete  the  set,  is  Burke's 
Extinct  Peerages,  a  record  of  families  which  possessed 
titles,  traced  down  to  the  death  of  the  last  holder  of 
the  title. 

What  interest  have  we  Americans  in  these  volumes? 
Apparently  very  little.  And  yet,  in  turning  them  over, 
we  every  little  while  light  on  some  scrap  of  American 
family  history,  giving  a  portion  of  the  records  of  fami- 


TRACES    OF    AMERICAN    LINEAGE    IN    ENGLAND.         \"J 

lies  who  are  descended  from  these  old  stocks,  and 
whose  history  would  not  be  complete  without  this  no- 
tice of  the  parent  tree ;  or,  what  we  find  is  mingled  in 
some  way  with  the  annals  of  our  own  country,  so  that 
it  throws  new  light  on  some  point  in  our  affairs,  or 
gives  a  completion  of  detail  to  some  portion  of  Ameri- 
can History. 

Let  us  take  an  example  of  this — BENEDICT  ARNOLD. 
His  name  is  unfortunately  "familiar  in  our  ears  as 
household  words."  Every  school-boy  knows  the  story 
of  his  treason,  as  it  mingles  with  the  sad  narrative  of 
Major  Andre's  life  and  death.  We  know  that  England 
rewarded  his  betrayal  of  his  trust  with  the  rank  of 
Major-General  in  her  service,  the  same  which  he  had 
held  in  our  army.  But  the  war  ended,  and  he  went  to 
Europe  with  her  returning  forces,  and  what  is  after- 
wards known  of  him  ?  There  are  one  or  two  anecdotes 
floating  about — such  as  the  account  of  his  duel  with 
Lord  Balcarras— and  that  is  all.  We  will  guarantee 
there  is  not  one  American  in  a  thousand  can  tell  any- 
thing with  regard  to  his  future.  As  far  as  we  are 
concerned — as  Carlyle  would  express  it — "he  disap- 
peared into  infinite  space." 

Have  not  some  of  our  readers  thought  of  this; 
wished  to  know  the  subsequent  history  of  the  Arnold 
family,  and  wondered  whether  his  treason  enabled 
them  to  prosper  in  worldly  matters,  or  whether  "  the 
sin  of  the  father  was  visited  on  the  children  to  the  third 
and  fourth  generation "  ?  We  know  no  source  from 
which  this  want  can  be  supplied,  except  by  Burke's 
Landed  Gentry.  We  turn  to  the  name  of  Arnold  and 
find  this  history  of  the  family  :— 

GENERAL  BENEDICT  ARNOLD,  m.  8  April,  1779,  Margaret,  dau.  of 
Edward  Shippen,  Chief  Judge  of  Pennsylvania,  and  died  in  1801, 
having  had  issue. 


48          TRACES    OF    AMERICAN    LINEAGE    IN    AMERICA. 

Edward  Shippen,  Lieut.  6th  Bengal  Cavalry,  and  Paymaster  of 
Mutra,  d.  at  Dinapore  in  India,  13  Dec.,  1813. 

James  Robertson,  Lieut.-General,  K.  H.  and  K.  Crescent,  m.  Vir- 
ginia, d.  of  Bartlett  Goodrich,  Esq.,  of  Saling  Grove,  Essex,  which 
lady  died  14  July,  1813. 

George,  Lieut. -Col.  2d  Bengal  Cavalry,  died  in  India  i  Nov.,  1828. 

WILLIAM  FETCH,  of  whom  presently. 

Sophia,  m.  Col.  Pownall  Phipps,  E.  I.  C.  Service  (of  the  Mulgrave 
family). 

WM.  FETCH  ARNOLD,  ESQ.,  of  Little  Missenden  Abbey,  Capt.  izth 
Lancers,  ^.25  June,  1794  ;  m.  19  May,  1819,  Elizabeth  Cecelia,  only 
dau.  of  Alexander  Ruddach,  Esq.,  of  Tobago,  and  had  issue. 

EDWARD  GLADWIN,  of  whom  presently. 

William  Trail,  b.  23  Oct.,  1826,  Capt.  4th  Regt. 

Margaret  Stuart,  m.  Rev.  Robert  H.  S.  Rogers. 

Elizabeth  Sophia,  m.  Rev.  Bryant  Burgess. 

Georgiana  Phipps,  m.  Rev.  John  Stephenson. 

REV.  EDWARD  GLADWIN  ARNOLD;  of  Little  Missencen  Abbey,  Co. 
Bucks,  Rector  of  Stapleford,  Herts,  b.  25  April,  1823;  m,  27  April, 
1852,-  Charlotte  Georgiana,  eldest  daughter  of  Lord  Henry  Chol- 
mondeley. 

Seat,  Little  Missenden  Abbey,  Co.  Bucks. 

Here  we  have  the  whole  story  minutely  set  forth, 
from  the  arch  traitor  himself  down  to  his  grandson,  the 
present  representative.  It  seems  that  his  sons  held 
high  offices  in  the  army,  and  the  family  had  been  en- 
abled to  take  its  place  among  the  English  Landed 
Gentry,  and  to  hold  it  to  the  present  time.  In  a  world- 
ly point  of  view,  there  is  probably  hardly  a  family  of 
the  American  Generals  who  remained  faithful  in  the 
"  times  which  tried  men's  souls,"  which  at  the  present 
day  is  as  well  off  as  that  of  Benedict  Arnold. 

Let  us  take  another  example — SIR  WILLIAM  JOHN- 
SON. There  has  always  been  a  great  deal  of  romance 
associated  with  his  life.  Settling  on  the  Mohawk, 
among  the  Indians,  he  obtained  an  influence  over  the 
Six  Nations  which  no  other  white  man  on  this  Conti- 
nent has  possessed.  In  the  old  French  war  he  was 


TRACES    OF    AMERICAN    LINEAGE    IN    AMERICA.          49 

able  to  array  these  powerful  tribes  on  the  side  of  the 
English,  and  under  his  command  they  secured  to  the 
Colonial  troops  the  victory  over  the  French  under 
Baron  Dieskau  at  Lake  George,  and  thus  this  raid  into 
the  colonies  was  hurled  back.  For  this  he  was  re- 
warded with  a  Baronetcy.  He  resided  at  Johnson  Hall 
in  a  kind  of  barbaric  splendor,  which  was  most  capti- 
vating to  the  Indian  chiefs  who  were  his  constant  visit- 
ors. The  late  Wm.  L.  Stone,  of  New  York,  published 
his  life  in  two  volumes,  and  Paulding  made  him  a  pro- 
minent character  in  his  novel  of  Tke  Dutchman's  Fire- 
side. He  died  just  as  the  Revolutionary  War  began, 
and  it  is  asserted  that  his  life  was  shortened  by  the  vio- 
lent struggle  through  which  he,  like  many  other  lead- 
ing men,  was  obliged  to  pass  in  deciding  between  the 
cause  of  his  old  friends  and  that  of  the  Government  to 
which  he  owed  his  honors. 

His  son  and  successor,  Sir  John  Johnson,  seems  to 
have  been  troubled  with  no  such  scruples,  but  at  once 
arrayed  against  the  Colonists  all  the  Indian  tribes  over 
which  he  had  influence.  For  years  his  inroads  kept  in 
fear  the  whole  border  down  to  the  very  surburbs  of 
Albany,  and  terrible  were  the  scenes  enacted  in  many 
a  solitary  hamlet,  and  even  in  the  large  town  of  Sche- 
nectady,  when  they  were  sacked  and  burned  by  his 
wild  warriors.  Their  record  is  graphically  written  in 
Stone's  Life  of  Brandt.  When  the  war  ended  he  re- 
treated into  Canada,  abandoning  his  great  possessions 
and  leaving  Johnson  Hall,  which  still  stands,  a  monu- 
ment of  the  family. 

But  what  was  his  future  history,  and  how  fared  it 
with  the  family  who,  for  loyalty,  thus  abandoned  their 
wide  lands?  Few  indeed  had  sacrificed  as  much  as 
they  did  for  this  cause.  We  turn  to  Burke's  Peerage, 
and  here  is  the  record  of  the  next  generations  :— 
7 


5O        TRACES    OF    AMERICAN    LINEAGE    IN    ENGLAND. 

WILLIAM  JOHNSON,  ESQ.,  born  at  Smithtown,  Co.  Meath,  descend- 
ed from  an  Irish  family,  was  adopted  by  his  maternal  uncle,  Sir  Peter 
Warren,  K.B.,  and  went  out  with  him  to  North  America,  where  he 
rose  to  the  rank  of  a  Col.  in  the  army,  and  distinguished  himself  as  a 
military  commander  during  the  first  American  war,  and  as  a  negotiator 
with  Indian  tribes;  he  was  created  a  Baronet  27  Nov.,  1755.  He 
d.  ii  July,  1774,  aged  59,  at  his  seat,  Johnson  Hall,  New  York,  leav- 
ing, by  Catherine  Wisenberg,  his  wife, 

JOHN,  his  heir, 

Anne,  m.  to  Col.  Daniel  Clauss,  of  North  America,  and  d.  about 
1798. 

Mary,  m.  Col.  Gray  Johnson,  and  had  two  daughters,  Mary,  wife  of 
Gen.  Colin  Campbell ;  and  Julia. 

The  son  and  heir, 

II.  SIR  JOHN,  of  Mount  Johnson,  Montreal,  Superintendent-Gen- 
eral, and  Inspector-General  of  Indian  Affairs  in  British  North  Ameri- 
ca, Colonel-in-Chief  of  the  six  battalions  of  the  militia  of  the  Eastern 
Township  of  Lower  Canada,  was  knighted  at  St.  James,  London,  22 
Nov.,  1765.     He  m.  30  June,  1773,  Mary,  dau.  of  John  Watts,  Esq., 
some  time  President  of  the  Council  at  New  York,  and  by  her  had 
issue, 

1.  William,  Lieut.-Col.,  b.  1775;  m.  1802,  Susan,  dau.  of  Stephen 
De  Lancey,  Governor  of  Tobago,  and  left  issue,. 

Charlotte,  m.,  in  1820,  to  Alexander,  Count  Balmain,  Russian  Com- 
missioner at  St.  Helena. 

2.  ADAM  GORDON,  3d  Baronet. 

3.  James  Stephen,  Capt.  28th  Regt,  killed  at  Badajos. 

4.  Robert  Thomas,  drowned  in  Canada,  1812. 

5.  Warren,  Major  68th  Regt,  d.  1813. 

7.  John,  of  Point  Oliver,  Montreal,  Col.  Comm.  6th  battalion  of 
militia,  b.  8  Aug.,  1782,  m.  10  Feb.,  1825,  Mary  Deane,  dau.  of 
Richard  Dillon,  Esq.,  of  Montreal  ;  and  d.  23  June,  1841,  leaving 
issue, 

WILLIAM  GEORGE,  present  Baronet. 

7.  Charles  Christopher,  b.  29  Oct.,  1798,  Lieut.-Col.  in  the  army, 
Knight  of  the  2d  class  of  the  Prussian  Order  of  the  Lion  and  Sun  ;  m. 
1818,  Susan,  eldest  dau.  of  Admiral  Sir  Edward  Griffith,  of  North- 
brook  House,  Hants,  and  d.  30  Sept.,  1854. 

Sir  John  died  Jan.,  1830,  and  was  succeeded  by  his  eldest  surviv- 
ing son. 

III.  SIR  ADAM  GORDON,  Lieut. -Col.  of  6th  battalion  of  militia,  b. 
6  May,  1781,  d.  unm.,   21   May,    1843,  and  was  succeeded  by  his 
nephew,  William  George. 


TRACES    OF    AMERICAN     LINEAGE    IN    ENGLAND.          51 

IV.  SIR  WILLIAM  GEORGE  JOHNSON,  of  Twickenham,  Co.  Middle- 
sex, an  officer  in  the  Royal  Artillery,  b.  19  Dec.,  1830,  succeeded  as 
4th  Baronet,  at  the  decease  of  his  uncle  in  May,  1843. 

They  too  have  preserved  their  position,  but  at  the 
end  of  the  lineage,  in  Burke,  there  is  no  Seat  given,  as 
usual,  and  we  presume,  therefore,  the  Baronet  is  land- 
less, and  has  no  compensation  for  the  wide  manors  his 
family  once  held  on  the  pleasant  Mohawk. 

Sometimes,  when  no  lineage  of  a  family  is  given,  we 
trace  the  name  through  various  intermarriages.  This 
is  the  case  with  the  DE  LANCEYS,  Huguenots  from 
France,  so  prominent  in  New  York,  until  they  were 
crushed  by  the  confiscations  which  followed  the  Revo- 
lution. One  of  them,  as  we  see  above  in  the  Johnson 
family,  is  mentioned  as  marrying  a  son  of  Sir  John 
Johnson.  The  name  occurs  again  in  another  family, 
for  after  the  death  of  her  first  husband  we  find  her  mar- 
rying Lieut-General  Sir  Hudson  Lowe,  K.  C.  B.,  so 
well  known  as  the  Governor  of  St.  Helena  during  the 
imprisonment  of  Napoleon.  Her  brother,  Sir  William 
Howe  De  Lancey,  died  at  Waterloo  on  the  Staff  of 
the  Duke  of  Wellington.  Another  of  the  family  mar- 
ried Lieut.-Gen.  Sir  William  Draper,  and  another  Field- 
Marshal  Sir  David  Dundas.  Another  is  recorded  as 
the  wife  of  Sir  Julius  Clifton,  Bart.  In  this  way  it  is 
that  here  and  there  we  meet  with  traces  of  this  old 
loyalist  family. 

At  the  close  of  the  last  century,  SIR  JOHN  TEMPLE 
came  to  this  country  as  British  Consul-General.  He 
married  in  Boston,  and  his  descendants,  in  different 
lines,  under  various  names,  are  widely  diffused  through 
New  York.  This  is  Burke's  record : — 

SIR  JOHN  TEMPLE,  born  in  1730,  m.  20  Jan.,  1767,  Elizabeth,  dau. 
of  James  Bowdoin,  Esq.,  Governor  of  the  State  of  Massachusetts,  and 
had  issue. 


52         TRACES    OF    AMERICAN    LINEAGE    IN    ENGLAND. 

GRENVILLE,  his  successor. 

James,  b.  7  June,  1776,  who  assumed  the  surname  of  Bowdoin, 
pursuant  to  the  desire  of  his  maternal  uncle. 

Elizabeth  Bowdoin,  m.  in  1786,  Thomas  Lindell  Winthrop,  Esq., 
Boston. 

Augusta,  m.  to  Lieut.-Col.  Palmer,  of  8th  Hussars. 

SIR  GRENVILLE  TEMPLE,  b.  10  Oct.,  1768,  m.  20  March,  1797, 
Elizabeth,  dau.  of  Col.  George  Watson  of  Boston,  and  had  issue, 

GRENVILLE,  late  Baronet. 

Sir  John  Temple  died  in  1796,  and  his  monument 
can  now  be  seen  in  the  chancel  of  St.  Paul's  Church, 
New  York,  with  the  arms  and  punning  motto,  TEMPLA 
QUAM  DILECTA  (the  opening  words  of  the  Latin.version 
of  Ps.  Ixxxiv.),  "  Temples,  how  lovely  !  " 

In  the  romantic  story  of  Major  Andre  we  learn  that 
it  was  at  the  residence  of  BEVERLEY  ROBINSON,  oppo- 
site West  Point,  that  he  met  Arnold.  The  house  is 
still  standing  unaltered  from  that  day.  The  owner's 
family  were  well-known  loyalists.  Emigrating  from 
England  in  the  reign  of  Charles  II.,  Christopher  Rob- 
inson was  Secretary  of  the  Colony,  and  his  son,  John 
Robinson,  was  President  of  the  Council  of  Virginia, 
and  married  Catherine,  dau.  of  Robert  Beverley,  Esq. 

From  one  of  his  sons  the  New  York  family  de- 
scended. At  the  close  of  the  Revolution  they  retired 
to  New  Brunswick  and  Canada,  where  Burke  thus  gives 
the  history  of  the  present  head  :— 

SIR  JOHN  BEVERLEY  ROBINSON,  BART.,  of  Beverley  House,  in  the 
city  of  Toronto,  Chancellor  of  Trinity  College  in  the  Province. 

Sir  John  was  appointed  Acting  Attorney-General  of  Upper  Canada, 
in  November,  1812  ;  Solicitor-General  in  March,  1815  ;  Attorney- 
General  in  February,  1818;  and  Chief  Justice  of  Upper  Canada,  13 
July,  1829.  In  November,  1850,  he  was  appointed  a  Companion  of 
the  Order  of  the  Bath,  and  created  a  Baronet,  by  patent,  September 
21,  1854. 


TRACES    OF    AMERICAN    LINEAGE    IN    ENGLAND.         53 

Another  branch  remained  in  New  York,  where  the 
name  is  still  held  in  honor  in  the  community. 

In  turning  over  the  old  volumes  of  Burke's  Peerage, 
we  find  the  lineage  of  another  former  New  York  family, 
the  INGRAHAMS. 

The  records  of  this  family  begin  with  Ranulf,  the  son 
of  Ingel'ram  or  Ing'ram,  who  was  sheriff  of  Nottingham 
and  Derby  in  the  beginning  of  the  reign  of  Henry  II., 
as  were  his  sons  Robert  and  William.  Robert  In- 
gram, Knight,  whose  arms  are  painted  at  Temple 
Newsam,  was  of  so  great  eniinency  in  the  reign  of 
Henry  III.  that  the  Prior  and  Convent  of  Lenton 
granted  to  him  a  yearly  rent  out  of  their  lands  at 
Sheynton  and  Nottingham  for  his  military  services  in 
their  defence. 

In  the  reign  of  Charles  I.  Sir  Arthur  Ingram,  of 
Temple  Newsam,  was  prominent  as  a  Cavalier.  On 
the  triumph  of  the  Parliament,  he  saved  his  estate  by 
the  fact  that  he  married  a  daughter  of  Lord  Viscount 
Fairfax,  of  Gilling,  and  his  eldest  son  had  married  a 
daughter  of  Montague,  Earl  of  Manchester,  both  Par- 
liamentary leaders.  Sir  Arthur  died  in  1655,  six  years 
before  the  restoration  of  Charles  II.  On  the  King's 
return,  he  created  Sir  Arthur's  eldest  son  Henry,  Vis- 
count Irwin.*  The  title  remained  in  the  family  until 
1778,  when,  on  the  death  of  Charles  Ingram,  ninth  Vis- 
count Irwin,  without  sons,  it  became  extinct.  Hence- 
forth the  history  of  the  family  is  carried  on  in  Burke's 
Landed  Gentry.  The  estate  descended  to  the  Mar- 
chioness of  Hertford,  daughter  of  the  last  Viscount,  and 
from  her  to  her  sister,  Mrs.  Meynell,  whose  son  took 

*  The  portraits  of  Sir  Arthur  Ingram,  in  Cavalier  dress,  of  his  son  Henry,  first 
Viscount  Irwin,  in  full  armor,  and  his  grandson  Arthur,  second  Viscount  Irwin,  in 
half  armor  (all  nearly  full  length),  are  in  the  collection  of  the  Bishop  of  California, 
in  San  Francisco. 


54         TRACES    OF    AMERICAN    LINEAGE    IN    ENGLAND. 

the  name  of  Ingram,  and  his  son  is  now  the  possessor 
of  Temple  Newsam. 

The  American  Ingrahams — the  spelling  of  the  name 
having  been  changed  after  their  settlement  in  this  coun- 
try— are  descended  from  Arthur  Ingram,  second  son  of 
Sir  Arthur  and  youngest  brother  of  the  first  Viscount. 
He  married  a  daughter  of  Sir  John  Mallory.  At  the 
Revolution,  the  New  York  branch  of  this  family  was 
represented  by  Duncan  Ingraham,  Esq.,  of  Greenvale 
Farm,  near  Poughkeepsie,  Dutchess  Co.  He  was  a 
loyalist,  and  went  to  Europe,  where  he  resided,  in 
Paris,  until  the  peace  of  1784.  President  John  Adams 
frequently  mentions  him  in  his  diary,  in  Paris,  in  1779. 
In  1784  he  returned  to  this  country,  conformed  to  the 
Government,  and  died  at  his  place,  on  the  Hudson, 
in  1807.  This  family  is  now  extinct  in  New  York,  and 
is  represented  by  Commodore  Duncan  N.  Ingraham, 
of  Charleston,  South  Carolina,  who  was  distinguished, 
in  1853,  by  his  gallantry  in  the  harbor  of  Smyrna,  in 
the  controversy  with  the  Austrian  vessels  of  war. 

We  turn  to  another  New  York  family — the  PIERRE- 
FONTS.  They  are  of  Norman  origin,  Robert  de  Pierre- 
pont  having  come  over  to  England  with  the  Conqueror. 
Pierrepbnt  was  a  designation  taken  by  the  head  of  the 
family,  from  a  stone  bridge  built  by  him  in  Normandy 
in  the  time  of  Charlemagne,  to  take  the  place  of  a  ferry, 
which  was  then  considered  a  great  achievement. 

In  the  time  of  Edward  I.,  Sir  Henry  de  Pierrepont, 
then  possessed  of  large  landed  estates,  married  Annona 
de  Manvers,  by  whom  he  acquired  the  Lordship  of 
Holme,  in  the  County  of  Nottingham,  now  called 

HoLME-PlERREPONT. 

Sir  George  Pierrepont  of  Holme-Pierrepont  had  three 
sons,  from  the  elder  of  whom  descended  the  Dukes  of 
Kingston.  From  the  younger  son  was  descended 


TRACES    OF    AMERICAN    LINEAGE    IN    ENGLAND.         55 

John  Pierrepont,  who  came  to  Roxbury,  Mass.,  and  his 
eldest  son  was  the  Rev.  James  Pierrepont,  of  New 
Haven.  During  the  American  Revolution,  the  second 
Duke  of  Kingston  died  without  issue,  when  the  eldest 
line  of  the  descendants  of  Rev.  James  Pierrepont,  of 
New  Haven,  became  rightful  heir  to  the  dignities  and 
estates.  The  brilliant  and  celebrated  Duchess  of 
Kingston,  whose  marriage  with  the  Duke  the  collateral 
relatives  attempted  to  set  aside,  sent  over  to  America 
and  offered  her  influence  in  sustaining  the  cause  of  the 
American  heirs.  It  was,  however,  during  the  troubles 
of  the  Revolution,  and  no  steps. were  taken. 

Lady  Frances  Pierrepont,  sister  of  the  second  Duke 
of  Kingston,  married  Sir  Philip  Meadows,  and  her  son 
assumed  the  name  of  Pierrepont,  and  took  the  estates, 
though  he  could  not  inherit  the  titles. 

Of  the  branch  in  this  country,  some  of  our  most  em- 
inent men  have  been  descendants  of  James  Pierrepont 
of  New  Haven.  One  daughter  married  the  eminent 
divine,  President  Jonathan  Edwards.  The  celebrated 
Pierrepont  Edwards  was  her  son.  Judge  Ogden  Ed- 
wards of  New  York,  Governor  Henry  W.  Edwards  of 
Connecticut,  and  Timothy  Dwight,  D.D.,  President  of 
Yale  College,  were  her  grandsons.  The  New  Haven 
branch  still  occupies  the  old  mansion  on  part  of  the 
estate  granted  to  James  Pierrepont  in  1684,  and  has 
the  original  portrait  of  their  ancestor  painted  in  1711. 

The  New  York  branch  is  represented  in  Brooklyn, 
Long  Island,  and  at  Pierrepont  Manor,  in  Western 
New  York,  by  the  descendants  of  Hezekiah,  sixth  son 
of  the  Rev.  James  Pierrepont. 

Perhaps  three  of  the  most  historical  English  descents 
of  American  families  are  those  of  the  Barclays,  Liv- 
ingstons, and  Lawrences,  of  New  York.  Each  of  them 
has  a  proved  pedigree  of  more  than  700  years.  The 


56         TRACES    OF    AMERICAN    LINEAGE    IN    ENGLAND. 

BARCLAYS  prove  their  descent  from  Theobald  de  Ber- 
keley in  i no.  From  him  they  are  traced  down*  to 
David  Barclay,  of  Urie,  of  whom  Burke  gives  the  fol- 
lowing notice  :— 

David  Barclay,  born  in  1610,  Colonel  under  Gustavus  Adolphus, 
purchased,  in  1648,  the  estate  of  Urie,  from  William,  Earl  Marischal. 
He  was  eldest  son  of  David  Barclay,  of  Mathers,  the  representative 
of  the  old  home  of  BARCLAY,  of  Mathers.  He  m.  Katherine,  daughter 
of  Sir  Robert  Gordon,  of  Gordonstown,  and  had,  with  two  daughters, 
Lucy  and  Jean,  m.  to  Sir  William  Cameron,  of  Lochiel,  three  sons, 
Robert,  his  heir.  John,  who  settled  in  America,  and  David. 

From  this  son  John  is  derived  the  American  branch. 
It  is  curious  to  see  how  soon  the  line  became  mingled 
up  with  the  familiar  names  of  our  old  New  York  fami- 
lies. We  will  trace  it  for  a  couple  of  generations.  The 
great  grandson  of  John  Barclay  was  the  Rev.  HENRY 
BARCLAY,  D.D.,  Rector  of  Trinity  Church,  New  York, 
who  died  1 764.  He  married  Mary,  daughter  of  Colonel 
Rutgers,  of  New  York,  and  had  issue- 
Cornelia,  m.  Col.  Stephen  De  Lancey. 

Anna,  m.  Col.  Beverley  Robinson. 

Thomas,  m.  Susan,  daughter  of  Peter  De  Lancey, 
Esq. 

The  children  of  Thomas  Barclay  were — 

Eliza,  m.  Schuyler  Livingston,  Esq. 

De  Lancey,  m.  Mary,  widow  of  Gurney  Barclay, 
M.P. 

Susan,  m.  Peter  G.  Stuyvesant,  Esq. 

Thomas,  m.  Catharine,  daughter  of  Walter  Chan- 
ning,  Esq.,  of  Boston. 

We  turn  now  to  the  LIVINGSTON  family  of  New  York. 
Few  American  families  have  so  distinguished  a  lineage. 
The  history  of  the  elder  branch,  the  attainted  Earl  of 

*  "Nicoll's  Peerages"  and  "Holgate's  Genealogies." 


TRACKS    OF    AMERICAN     LINEAGE    IN     ENGLAND.          57 

Linlithgow,  can  be  found  in  Burke's  Extinct  Peerages. 
The  present  representative  of  the  family  in  Scotland  is 
a  Baronet,  and  his  lineage  is  given  by  Burke  in  his 
Peerage. 

The  family  is  descended  from  Livingius,  a  Hungarian 
nobleman,  who  came  over  to  Scotland  in  the  suite  of 
Margaret,  Queen  of  King  Malcolm  III.,  about  1068. 
From  that  time  their  names  were  prominent  in  all  the 
political  and  warlike  movements  in  Scotland.  Sir 
Alexander  Livingston,  of  Calendar,  was  Judiciary  of 
Scotland.  His  son,  Sir  James  Livingston,  had  the 
appointment  of  Captain  of  the  Castle  of  Stirling,  with 
the  tuition  of  the  young  King,  James  II.,  committed  to 
him  by  his  father.  He  died  about  1467. 

The  family  then  received  the  title  of  Lord  Livingston, 
which,  in  the  seventh  Lord  Livingston,  was  merged  in 
the  higher  title  of  Earl  of  Linlithgow,  which  title  was 
transmitted  through  five  descendants,  till  it  was  for- 
feited with  the  estates  in  1/15,  for  their  devotion  to  the 
Stuarts.  Unlike  most  of  these  attainted  Scotch  titles, 
it  has  not  been  restored,  as  the  present  heir  declines 
the  barren  and  expensive  honor. 

In  1647,  Sir  James  Livingston  was  created  Earl  of 
Newburgh,  a  title  which  has  since  been  absorbed  in 
the  old  Venitian  House  of  GIUSTINIAM,  with  which 
they  intermarried.  The  sixth  Lord  Livingston  fought 
for  Queen  Mary  at  Langdale,  and  his  sister,  Mary 
Livingston,  was  one  of  the  four  Marys  who  were 
maids  of  honor  to  the  Queen.  As  an  old  Scotch  song 
recounts  it — 


i;  Last  night  the  Queen  had  four  Maries, 
To-night  she'll  hae  but  three, 
There  was  Mary  Seaton,  and  Mary  Beaton, 
And  Mary  Livingstone,  and  me." 


58         TRACES    OF    AMERICAN    LINEAGE    IN    ENGLAND. 

In  March,  1650,  John  Livingston  was  sent  as  a  Com- 
missioner to  Breda,  to  negotiate  terms  for  the  restora- 
tion of  Charles  II.  He  died  in  1692,  and  his  son, 
Robert  Livingston,  emigrated  to  America  in  1676.  He 
became,  July  18,  1683,  the  first  proprietor  of  the  Manor 
of  Livingston,  on  the  Hudson.  From  that  day  the 
name  has  been  identified  with  every  movement  in  the 
State,  and  (what  should  be  a  patent  of  nobility  in  this 
country)  it  is  found  among  the  Signers  of  the  Declara- 
tion of  Independence. 

We  finish  this  list  with  the  LAWRENCE  family  of  New 
York.  Their  first  ancestor  of  whom  mention  is  made 
in  the  English  Records,  was  Robert  Laurens,  Knight 
of  Ashton  Hall,  Lancastershire.  He  accompanied 
Richard  Cceur  de  Lion  in  his  famous  Crusade  to 
Palestine,  and  distinguished  himself  at  the  siege  of  St. 
Jean  d'Acre  in  1191,  by  being  the  first  to  plant  the 
banner  of  the  Cross  on  the  battlements  of  that  town. 
For  this  he  received  the  honor  of  knighthood  from 
King  Richard,  and  also  a  coat  of  arms  with  the  fire 
cross  (cross  raguly  gules),  which  is  borne  by  his  des- 
cendants in  this  country  to  this  day.  His  family  inter- 
married with  that  of  the  Washingtons,  his  grandson, 
Sir  James  Laurens,  having  married  Matilda  Washing- 
ton, in  the  reign  of  Henry  III. 

After  this  the  family  became  eminent  in  England. 
Sir  William  Lawrence,  born  in  1395,  was  killed  in  bat- 
tle in  France,  in  1455,  with  Lionel,  Lord  Welles.  Sir 
John  Lawrence  was  one  of  the  commanders  of  a  wing 
of  the  English  army  at  Flodden  Field,  under  Sir  Ed- 
mund Howard,  in  1513.  Sir  John  Lawrence,  the  ninth 
in  lineal  descent  from  the  above  Sir  Robert  Laurens, 
possessed  thirty-five  manors,  the  revenue  of  which,  in 
1491,  amounted  to  ,£6,000  sterling/*??'  annum.  Hav- 
ing, however,  killed  a  Gentleman  Usher  of  Henry  VII., 


TRACES    OF    AMERICAN    LINEAGE    IN    ENGLAND.         59 

he  was  outlawed  and  died  in  France,  when,  Ashton 
Hall  and  his  other  estates  passed,  by  royal  decree,  to 
his  relatives  Lord  Monteagle  and  Lord  Gerard. 

Another  member  of  this  family  was  Henry  Lawrence, 
one  of  the  Patentees  of  Connecticut  in  1635,  with  Lord 
Say  and  Seal,  Lord  Brook,  Sir  Arthur  Hasselrigg, 
Richard  Saltonstall,  George  Fenwick,  and  Henry  Dar- 
ley.  They  commissioned  John  Winthrop,  Jr.,  as  Gov- 
ernor over  this  Territory,  with  the  following  instruc- 
tions : — "  To  provide  able  men  for  making  fortifications 
and  building  houses  at  the  mouth  of  the  Connecticut 
River  and  the  harbor  adjoining ;  first,  for  their  own 
present  accommodation,  and  then  such  houses  as  may 
receive  men  of  quality,  which  latter  houses  we  would 
have  builded  within  the  fort."  The  Patentees  all  in- 
tended to  accompany  Governor  Winthrop  to  America, 
but  were  prevented  by  a  decree  of  Charles  I. 

This  Henry  Lawrence  was  in  great  distinction  in 
England  during  Cromwell's  time.  Born  in  1600,  he 
became  a  Fellow  Commoner  of  Emanuel  College,  Cam- 
bridge, in  1622,  but  having  taken  the  Puritan  side  he 
was  obliged  to  withdraw  for  a  time  to  Holland.  In 
1641  he  was  a  member  of  Parliament  for  Westmore- 
land, but  when  the  life  of  the  king  was  threatened,  he 
withdrew  from  the  Independents.  In  a  curious  old 
pamphlet  printed  in  the  year  1660,  entitled,  "The 
mystery  of  the  good  old  cause,  briefly  unfolded  in  a 
catalogue  of  the  members  of  the  late  Long  Parliament, 
that  held  office  both  civil  and  military,  contrary  to  the 
self-denying  ordinance  "-—is  the  following  passage:— 
"  Henry  Lawrence,  a  member  of  the  Long  Parliament, 
fell  off  at  the  murder  of  His  Majesty,  for  which  the 
Protector,  with  great  zeal,  declared  that  a  neutral  spirit 
was  more  to  be  abhorred  than  a  Cavalier  spirit,  and 
that  such  men  as  he  were  not  fit  to  be  used  in  such  a 


6O        TRACES    OF    AMERICAN    LINEAGE    IN    ENGLAND. 

day  as  that  when  God  was  cutting  down  Kingship  root 
and  branch.  Yet  he  came  into  play  again,  and  con- 
tributed much  to  the  setting  up  of  the  Protector ;  for 
which  worthy  service  he  was  made  and  continued  Lord 
President  of  the  Protector's  Council,  being  also  one  of 
the  Lords  of  the  other  House."* 

He  married  Amy,  daughter  of  Sir  Edward  Peyton, 
Bart.,  of  Iselham  in  Cambridgeshire.  He  leased  his 
estates  at  St.  Ives,  from  the  year  1631  to  1636,  to 
Oliver  Cromwell,  to  whom  he  was  second  cousin.  He 
was  twice  returned  as  member  of  Parliament  for  Hert- 
fordshire, in  1653  and  1654,  and  once  for  Colchester- 
borough,  in  Essex,  in  1656  ;  his  son  Henry  representing 
Caernarvonshire  the  same  year.  He  was  President  of 
the  Council  in  1656,  and  gazetted  as  "  Lord  of  the  other 
House,"  in  December,  1657.  On  the  death  of  Crom- 
well he  proclaimed  his  son  Richard  as  his  successor.  In 
Thurloe's  State  Papers,  vol.  2,  is  a  letter  to  him  from  the 
Queen  of  Bohemia  (sister  of  King  Charles),  recom- 
mending Lord  Craven  to  his  good  offices.  From  the 
tenor  of  the  letter  it  appears  that  they  were  in  the  habit 
of  corresponding.  In  a  Harleian  Manuscript,  No. 
1460,  there  is  a  drawing  of  all  the  ensigns  and  trophies 
won  in  battle  by  Oliver,  which  is  dedicated  to  his 
councillors,  and  ornamented  with  their  arms.  Amongst 
these  are  those  of  Henry  Lawrence,  the  Lord  Presi- 
dent, with  a  cross,  raguly  gules,  the  crest,  a  fish's  tail 
or  semi-dolphin.  A  portrait  of  the  President  is  inserted 
in  Clarendon's  History  of  the  Rebellion.  His  monu- 
ment, not  yet  effaced,  is  in  the  chapel  of  St.  Margaret, 
alias  Thele,  in  Hertfordshire. f 

John,  William,  and  Thomas  Lawrence,  who  came  to 
New  York  in  1635,  were  cousins  of  the  above  Henry 
Lawrence,  being  descended  from  John  Lawrence,  who 

*   "  Harleian  Miscellany,"  vol.  vi.,  p.  489.  f  Ibid. 


TRACES    OF    AMERICAN    LINEAGE    IN    ENGLAND.         6 1 

died  in  1538,  and  was  buried  in  the  Abbey  of  Ram- 
sey. .  They  became  at  once  large  landholders  in  the 
Colony,  and  from  these  the  present  New  York  family 
is  descended. 

But  we  must  close  this  list.  We  have  selected  a  few 
merely  as  specimens  of  a  numerous  class.  Were  we 
to  attempt  to  include  all  who  have  historical  pedigrees 
in  England,  the  time  would  fail  us  and  this  unpretend- 
ing article  swell  into  a  volume.  Through  all  the 
original  States  were  settled  families  who  brought  with 
them  the  best  blood  of  the  Old  Country.  We  might 
refer  to  the  Gardiners  of  Maine — the  Bowdoins 
and  Winthrops  of  Massachusetts — the  Saltonstalls 
and  Hillhouses  of  Connecticut — the  Constables,  and 
Montgomerys  of  New  York — the  Throckmortons 
of  New  Jersey — the  Cadwalladers  of  Pennsylvania — 
the  Rodneys  of  Delaware — the  Calyerts  and  Carrolls 
of  Maryland — the  Washingtons  and  Lees  of  Virginia 
— the  Stanlys  of  North  Carolina — and  the  Middle- 
tons  and  Pinckneys  of  South  Carolina.  Most  of  these 
names  have  been  for  generations  "  familiar  as  house- 
hold words  "  in  the  ears  of  our  people,  and  are  inter- 
woven with  all  that  is  historical  in  our  land.  In  very 
many  cases  the  younger  branches  of  distinguished 
families  sought  here  a  field  of  enterprise  and  action 
which  was  denied  them  at  home,  and  thus  their  blood 
has  been  widely  mingled  with  that  of  our  people. 
And  sometimes,  generations  afterwards,  as  in  the  case 
of  Lord  Fairfax  and  the  present  Lord  Aylmer  in  Can- 
ada, the  failure  of  the  elder  branch  in  England  sent 
titles  to  be  inherited  by  the  collateral  relatives  on  this 
continent. 

It  will  be  noticed  that  in  this  article  we  have  con- 
fined ourselves  entirely  to  English  lineage,  though  a 
similar  story  might  have  been  written  of  every  one  of 


62         TRACES    OF    AMERICAN    LINEAGE    IN    ENGLAND. 

the  great  Continental  nations.  Each  furnished  its  pro- 
portion to  people  our  land.  Nor  did  they  all  come  as 
mere  adventurers.  We  look  at  the  portrait  in  armor 
of  the  old  Governor  Stuyvesant,  painted  by  Van  Dyck, 
and  it  realizes  our  idea  of  the  stern  soldier  who  had 
shed  his  blood  on  the  battle-fields  of  the  Low  Coun- 
tries before  he  settled  on  the  banks  of  the  Hudson. 
In  the  same  way  Van  Courtlandt  had  distinguished 
himself  in  arms,  as  the  Beekmans  had  done  in  diplo- 
macy,- receiving  as  their  reward,  from  the  king  of  Ba- 
varia, the  coat-of-arms  they  now  bear. 

The  possessors  of  many  a  knightly  name,  whose 
war-cry  once  rang  over  the  battle-fields  of  the  Cruises, 
are  now  quietly  discharging  their  duties  as  citizens  in 
this  great  Republic,  and  not  unfrequently  the  noble 
from  beyond  the  Rhine  has  broken  away  from  the 
conventionalities  of  his  own  land,  and  when  he  took 
upon  him  the  oath  of  citizenship,  like  Steuben  and  De 
Zeng,  has  laid  aside  his  baron's  title  to  assume  his 
part  in  this  great  experiment  of  Equality  and  Self- 
government. 

But  in  this  land  of  their  adoption  their  very  names 
often  suffered  a  change  which  would  render  them  un- 
familiar in  the  ears  of  those  who  first  bore  them  to  this 
continent.  Thus  De  la  Montaigne  has  passed  into 
Montanya ;  and  who  in  the  name  of  Carow  can  recog- 
nize the  Querault  of  French  minstrelsy,  or  in  Hasbrouck 
a  descendant  of  the  chivalrous  Asbroques  of  St.  Reny  ? 

These  may  be  called  the  "  dottings  of  history."  It 
may  seem  unimportant  to  us  as  to  what  are  the  des- 
cents or  intermarriages  of  families,  but  this  is  far  from 
being  the  case.  It  is  by  these  inquiries  only  that  we 
can  often  determine  what  are  most  likely  to  be  the  pro- 
minent intellectual  or  moral  traits  of  a  race.  An  infu- 
sion of  new  blood  into  a  family  may  alter  its  character- 


TRACES    OF    AMERICAN    LINEAGE    IN    ENGLAND.         63 

istics  for  generations.  The  royal  family  of  Austria  still 
exhibit  the  long  face  and  peculiar  shape  of  the  jaw 
which  was  derived  from  their  intermarriage  with  a 
Polish  princess  two  centuries  ago.  And  why  may  not 
mental  and  moral  peculiarities  be  stamped  upon  a  race 
in  the  same  way  ?  One  family  is  distinguished  in  war, 
another  in  literature,  another  in  statesmanship,  and  an- 
other in  art;  and  we  can  trace  through  the  whole  line 
the  same  kind  of  talent  developed. 

The  settlement  of  this  new  continent  is  often  putting 
a  "great  gulf"  between  families  who  have  made  it 
their  home,  and  the  memorials  and  reminiscences  they 
left  behind  them  on  the  other  side  of  the  ocean.  Yet 
these  traditions  and  historical  facts  should  be  chronicled 
for  the  benefit  of  those  who  are  to  succeed  them. 
From  these  data  only  can  we  understand  those  mys- 
terious laws  of  organization  by  which  either  physical 
or  mental  or  moral  traits  are  transmitted  in  families. 

And  this  subject  is  now  receiving  increased  attention 
in  our  country.  In  New  England  a  quarterly  periodi- 
cal is  devoted  to  genealogical  records,  while  numerous 
volumes  have  been  published,  each  comprising  the 
history  of  some  single  family.  Will  not,  then,  the 
families  which  are  now  growing  up  in  our  land,  branch- 
es of  some  parent  tree  which  is  still  fixed  in  the  soil  of 
the  old  country,  feel  an  interest  in  tracing  their  blood 
as  it  flows  through  channels  on  different  sides  of  the 
Atlantic  ?  If  so,  these  brief  notes  may  not  be  without 
their  interest  or  use  to  the  descendents  of  THE  OLD 
REGIME. 

Year  after  year  the  historical  families  of  New  York 
are  fading  away  and  disappearing.  "  What "  the 
writer  once  asked  the  Prince  de  Joinville,  "  has  become 
of  the  Rohans  and  Montmorencies  and  the  other  great 
feudal  families  of  France?"  "Gone,"  said  the  prince, 


64         TRACES    OF    AMERICAN    LINEAGE    IN    ENGLAND. 

most  energetically,  "  gone,  never  to  be  revived.  The 
abolition  of  the  law  of  Primogeniture  has  destroyed 
them  forever."  And  so  it  has  been,  on  a  smaller  scale, 
with  the  Colonial  families  of  New  York.  Their  for- 
tunes have  been  exhausted  by  the  division  of  estates, 
until  their  old  ancestral  seats  have  passed  into  the 
hands  of  strangers  and  their  names  are  fading  out  from 
the  land. 

Perhaps,  in  future  years,  the  sketches  we  have  given, 
may  be  read  with  pleasure  by  their  descendants  who 
bear  their  honored  names.  For  them  the  past  has  a 
record  from  which  they  need  not  shrink.  The  feeling 
which  prompts  them  to  dwell  upon  the  generations  that 
have  gone  is  one  of  which  they  have  no  reason  to  be 
ashamed.  It  is  sanctioned  both  by  reason  and  religion. 

There  is  a  philosophy  in  those  words  of  Daniel 
Webster : — 

"  It  is  wise  for  us  to  recur  to  the  history  of  our  an- 
cestors. We  are  true  to  ourselves  only  when  we  act 
with  becoming  pride  for  the  blood  we  inherit,  and 
which  we  are  to  transmit  to  those  who  shall  soon  fill 
our  places." 


WASHINGTON'S  RESIDENCE  AS  PRESIDENT,  FRAN:<LIN  SQUARE  AND  CHERRY  ST.,  1789. 


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